4 ms·

Problem with Sean and most cosmologists is they are proliferate regurgitates with little independent thought.

ben_w 3y ago
Even before LLMs were dismissed as "stochastic parrots" (and even more so since then), I find myself noticing when people dismiss the intellectual capacity of entire groups. "Mickey Mouse degrees", https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/, the attitude displayed by the bully in "Zero for Conduct" and similar IRL dismissals of the entire ME area in the post 9/11 discourse, mid-Brexit politicians saying the country had had enough of experts, some of my fist girlfriends' anecdotes from her childhood, town v gown, …
- firebot 3y ago
  I don't follow.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    You, like all my examples, are blithely dismissing everyone who does understand a subject that you don't understand.
- aaron695 3y ago
  [dead]
ryanklee 3y ago
I really don't understand how you can put forth a criticism like this and be so vague at the same time. It really undermines your credibility. Be specific or why bother.
- firebot 3y ago
  I have no credibility. Sean jumps on the hype train all day long. I'm skeptical. I don't think this illustrious dark matter or big bang mean anything. So it's like that telephone game where Sean is the last person and gets to tell you what the first person said and he's always very excited but baseless. Really do like his energy. I just don't think he's much of an independent thinker.
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    Well, as someone with a shred of credibility, he really does have strong theoretical evidence for the things he's saying. The difficulty here is that theoretical physics is really fucking hard. Way too hard to distill down into a paragraph. I'm sure the man could do a lecture series on star formation in spiral galaxies to convince you but you're going to need a bachelor's at minimum to even start that. I think he's easy to dismiss because much of his exposition deals in philosophical physics, it's really his specialty. There's levels of solidity. Experimental physics is reality. Theoretical physics is an explanation of reality, sometimes attempting to extend to predict the next experiment. Philosophical physics takes theoretical tools and expands them to explain everything in the Universe, including the Hard questions. I don't think it's a problem that they do it, someone should be thinking of this stuff. Do you have much experience with theoretical physics or cosmology. I have some and the math really helps make these things comprehensible and reasonable. Theoretical physics without math is indeed just continuous excited, but baseless assertions. The math fixes this
    - firebot 3y ago
      I don't believe you. I prefer alternative theories. Plasma physics. Electric universe models. There's Gareth Samuel on YouTube, See The Pattern. He just explores various theories. Treats them as merely theories (instead of facts) and I like that approach. It's very historic and really fleshes out ideas. Then you got the Lerner himself, author of The Big Bang Never Happened, which I think has been overwhelmingly falsified so you mean you can take Sean and his amazing fantastic firework singularity that blew up from a dimensionless point and yeah blah blah blah blah blah inflation blah blah blah acceleration blah blah blah and it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. I'm really good at math. At least compared to most people. I'm 38 and really only started questioning the big bang maybe in the last decade, and then I found Eric Lerner and well, now I can firmly say the big bang never happened.
      - gitaarik 3y ago
        You might want to be careful with accepting alternative theories. They can sound very convincing when you don't understand the subject very well. Often people make illogical connections that sound nice but are either in conflict with other observations or theories, or are simply incorrect but just sound logical on the surface. Professor Dave Explains has a lot of scientific debunking videos where he thoroughly discusses these kind of popular alternative theories. For example about the electric universe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9q-v4lBGuw&t=0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9q-v4lBGuw&t=0s
- bazoom42 3y ago
  They probably adhere to some crackpot theory. The focus on “independent thought” as opposed to facts point in that direction. Don’t bother.

Even before LLMs were dismissed as "stochastic parrots" (and even more so since then), I find myself noticing when people dismiss the intellectual capacity of entire groups. "Mickey Mouse degrees", https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/, the attitude displayed by the bully in "Zero for Conduct" and similar IRL dismissals of the entire ME area in the post 9/11 discourse, mid-Brexit politicians saying the country had had enough of experts, some of my fist girlfriends' anecdotes from her childhood, town v gown, …

firebot 3y ago
I don't follow.
- ben_w 3y ago
  You, like all my examples, are blithely dismissing everyone who does understand a subject that you don't understand.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]

ryanklee 3y ago

I really don't understand how you can put forth a criticism like this and be so vague at the same time. It really undermines your credibility. Be specific or why bother.

firebot 3y ago
I have no credibility. Sean jumps on the hype train all day long. I'm skeptical. I don't think this illustrious dark matter or big bang mean anything. So it's like that telephone game where Sean is the last person and gets to tell you what the first person said and he's always very excited but baseless. Really do like his energy. I just don't think he's much of an independent thinker.
- wholinator2 3y ago
  Well, as someone with a shred of credibility, he really does have strong theoretical evidence for the things he's saying. The difficulty here is that theoretical physics is really fucking hard. Way too hard to distill down into a paragraph. I'm sure the man could do a lecture series on star formation in spiral galaxies to convince you but you're going to need a bachelor's at minimum to even start that. I think he's easy to dismiss because much of his exposition deals in philosophical physics, it's really his specialty. There's levels of solidity. Experimental physics is reality. Theoretical physics is an explanation of reality, sometimes attempting to extend to predict the next experiment. Philosophical physics takes theoretical tools and expands them to explain everything in the Universe, including the Hard questions. I don't think it's a problem that they do it, someone should be thinking of this stuff. Do you have much experience with theoretical physics or cosmology. I have some and the math really helps make these things comprehensible and reasonable. Theoretical physics without math is indeed just continuous excited, but baseless assertions. The math fixes this
  - firebot 3y ago
    I don't believe you. I prefer alternative theories. Plasma physics. Electric universe models. There's Gareth Samuel on YouTube, See The Pattern. He just explores various theories. Treats them as merely theories (instead of facts) and I like that approach. It's very historic and really fleshes out ideas. Then you got the Lerner himself, author of The Big Bang Never Happened, which I think has been overwhelmingly falsified so you mean you can take Sean and his amazing fantastic firework singularity that blew up from a dimensionless point and yeah blah blah blah blah blah inflation blah blah blah acceleration blah blah blah and it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. I'm really good at math. At least compared to most people. I'm 38 and really only started questioning the big bang maybe in the last decade, and then I found Eric Lerner and well, now I can firmly say the big bang never happened.
    - gitaarik 3y ago
      You might want to be careful with accepting alternative theories. They can sound very convincing when you don't understand the subject very well. Often people make illogical connections that sound nice but are either in conflict with other observations or theories, or are simply incorrect but just sound logical on the surface. Professor Dave Explains has a lot of scientific debunking videos where he thoroughly discusses these kind of popular alternative theories. For example about the electric universe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9q-v4lBGuw&t=0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9q-v4lBGuw&t=0s
bazoom42 3y ago
They probably adhere to some crackpot theory. The focus on “independent thought” as opposed to facts point in that direction. Don’t bother.