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19th Century Scientists also claimed that heavier than air flight would be impossible. 19th century scientists though that space was filled with ether. The 19

19th Century Scientists also claimed that heavier than air flight would be impossible. 19th century scientists though that space was filled with ether. The 19th century scientists predicted global warming trope is basically survival bias.

MayeulC 4y ago
Indeed, and I am not sure if there was a consensus on that topic back then. However, it is remarkable that some predicted it, as not everyone was paying attention. One issue with "scientists" (and engineers, as well as other humans, including me and you, and everyone on HN) is that they can't help but give their "expert" opinion on every topic, even if they are not an actual expert (related to Dunning-Kruger, although I was recently pointed out[1] that what people call DK is not what the paper was about). And, from my experience, we tend to attach more credibility to claims by famous people than from skilled people. Or at least broadcast them more. Einstein said that after he became famous, people started asking his opinion on any topic, from politics to football. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141367
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  > is that they can't help but give their "expert" opinion on every topic, even if they are not an actual expert Aka being human. This all says more about the people invoking it than the supposed effect. That is, they expect otherwise smart people to not behave like people. But they do, and they talk about subjects they have no clue about, just like everyone else.
  - MayeulC 4y ago
    Well, I'm guilty of it myself, but I try to pay attention. It's a trap that can be avoided to some extent if both the audience/interviewer and interviewee are aware of it.
compiskey 4y ago
They didn’t predict global warming. They measured directly industrial emission accumulation and predicted an impact on human health. Global warming is a colloquialism. The researchers did the science that gives rise to it. Luminiferous Aether is just another name for electromagnetic field effects. Which do literally exist but our written logic works out better if we talk around it as an idea not a thing. You’re just arguing semantics to look smurt. Qualitative ideas like survivorship bias are relative in when they apply.
- jstanley 4y ago
  The ether was a proposed explanation for electromagnetism.
  - compiskey 4y ago
    Right; it came about as experiments suggested something actually did exist. It’s not the same kind of gibberish “mechanical flight is impossible” ended up being.
    - btilly 4y ago
      In the defense of 19th century scientists, the best approximate solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations really did predict that mechanical aircraft should not be able to fly, curve balls should not curve in the air, and so on. It was not until 1904 that Ludwig Prandtl published Über Flüssigkeitsbewegung bei sehr kleiner Reibung (On the Motion of Fluids in Very Little Friction) which first discovered the importance of boundary layers. The breakdown of approximations in those boundary layers allows for all sorts of behaviors that came as a surprise. In time science caught up up with practical engineering advances to finally understand how airplanes can fly, pitchers can throw curve balls, and so on. And even so, those old approximations are still used because they are mostly right! So they were wrong, but it wasn't gibberish either. For a similar example of a mostly correct scientific theory producing wrong results, until near the end of the 20th century the linear wave model predicted that rogue waves were impossible. Today we can look back at shipwreck records and laugh at their stupidity. But in fact you can spend a week looking at every wave that passes a point and probably won't find even a single wave that doesn't fit the theory. Scientific overconfidence in well-tested theories is a systemic error that we are likely to always be prone to. Most of the time it is well justified. But we do nobody a favor by dismissing past examples of this as "gibberish".
kjkjadksj 4y ago
We believe ancient greek math but not their religion today
est31 4y ago
Survival is how science works. Some theories are proven wrong, others are proven right. The theories that are proven wrong are often still quite accurate except for some edge cases. We shouldn't use our advantage of having one entire century plus two decades of research history to ridicule scientists from 100 years ago. They didn't have python, excel or pocket calculators. Yet they were able to derive really fancy rules and laws. I think that's really impressive, even if they were wrong on some things. We are likely wrong on some things too, doesn't mean we should discard all of our science.

MayeulC 4y ago

Indeed, and I am not sure if there was a consensus on that topic back then. However, it is remarkable that some predicted it, as not everyone was paying attention. One issue with "scientists" (and engineers, as well as other humans, including me and you, and everyone on HN) is that they can't help but give their "expert" opinion on every topic, even if they are not an actual expert (related to Dunning-Kruger, although I was recently pointed out[1] that what people call DK is not what the paper was about). And, from my experience, we tend to attach more credibility to claims by famous people than from skilled people. Or at least broadcast them more. Einstein said that after he became famous, people started asking his opinion on any topic, from politics to football. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141367

bcrosby95 4y ago
> is that they can't help but give their "expert" opinion on every topic, even if they are not an actual expert Aka being human. This all says more about the people invoking it than the supposed effect. That is, they expect otherwise smart people to not behave like people. But they do, and they talk about subjects they have no clue about, just like everyone else.
- MayeulC 4y ago
  Well, I'm guilty of it myself, but I try to pay attention. It's a trap that can be avoided to some extent if both the audience/interviewer and interviewee are aware of it.

compiskey 4y ago

They didn’t predict global warming. They measured directly industrial emission accumulation and predicted an impact on human health. Global warming is a colloquialism. The researchers did the science that gives rise to it. Luminiferous Aether is just another name for electromagnetic field effects. Which do literally exist but our written logic works out better if we talk around it as an idea not a thing. You’re just arguing semantics to look smurt. Qualitative ideas like survivorship bias are relative in when they apply.

jstanley 4y ago
The ether was a proposed explanation for electromagnetism.
- compiskey 4y ago
  Right; it came about as experiments suggested something actually did exist. It’s not the same kind of gibberish “mechanical flight is impossible” ended up being.
  - btilly 4y ago
    In the defense of 19th century scientists, the best approximate solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations really did predict that mechanical aircraft should not be able to fly, curve balls should not curve in the air, and so on. It was not until 1904 that Ludwig Prandtl published Über Flüssigkeitsbewegung bei sehr kleiner Reibung (On the Motion of Fluids in Very Little Friction) which first discovered the importance of boundary layers. The breakdown of approximations in those boundary layers allows for all sorts of behaviors that came as a surprise. In time science caught up up with practical engineering advances to finally understand how airplanes can fly, pitchers can throw curve balls, and so on. And even so, those old approximations are still used because they are mostly right! So they were wrong, but it wasn't gibberish either. For a similar example of a mostly correct scientific theory producing wrong results, until near the end of the 20th century the linear wave model predicted that rogue waves were impossible. Today we can look back at shipwreck records and laugh at their stupidity. But in fact you can spend a week looking at every wave that passes a point and probably won't find even a single wave that doesn't fit the theory. Scientific overconfidence in well-tested theories is a systemic error that we are likely to always be prone to. Most of the time it is well justified. But we do nobody a favor by dismissing past examples of this as "gibberish".

kjkjadksj 4y ago

We believe ancient greek math but not their religion today

est31 4y ago

Survival is how science works. Some theories are proven wrong, others are proven right. The theories that are proven wrong are often still quite accurate except for some edge cases. We shouldn't use our advantage of having one entire century plus two decades of research history to ridicule scientists from 100 years ago. They didn't have python, excel or pocket calculators. Yet they were able to derive really fancy rules and laws. I think that's really impressive, even if they were wrong on some things. We are likely wrong on some things too, doesn't mean we should discard all of our science.