3 ms·

I think everything we don't have a model for is surprisingly strange. Gravity only seems "normal" because we've been teaching a reasonable model for it for hund

I think everything we don't have a model for is surprisingly strange. Gravity only seems "normal" because we've been teaching a reasonable model for it for hundreds of years - Aristotle thought things fell to the ground because that was "their nature", but thought it quite weird. X-Rays seem bonkers unless you've grown up with them, and there is something deeply unnerving about genetics, quantum and even GenAI until you've spent some time pulling apart the innards and building an explainable model that makes sense to you. And even then it can catch you out. More ways to explain the models help normalise it all - what's now taught at 9th grade used to be advanced post-doc research, in almost every field. And so it goes on. 2D superconductors don't make much sense because, as the article says, theory is behind experimentation here. That's also why there is both incredible excitement, but also a worry that none of this is going to stack up to anything more than a bubble. My old Uni (Manchester) doubled down hard on the work of Geim and Novoselov by building a dedicated "Graphene Institute", after they got the Nobel Prize, but even 15 years after that award most people are still trying to figure out what does it all actually mean really? Not just in terms of the theory of physics, but how useful is this stuff, in real world usage? It'll settle down in due course. The model will become apparent, we'll be able to explain it through a series of bouncing back between theory and experiment, as ever, and then it won't seem so strange any more. I'm not sure that'll ever be true of quantum computing for me, but then I am getting a bit older now...

ggddv 2y ago
It’s interesting to think what in people’s personal perception makes them find strange thing interesting or scary or boring. Especially when it comes to grapheme.
- desdenova 2y ago
  Imagine doing computing on grapheme clusters.
  - HappMacDonald 2y ago
    That's what I thought LLMs did
aaronblohowiak 2y ago
I still don’t believe explanations for gravity…let alone dark matter!
- hansvm 2y ago
  Not believing an explanation for dark matter seems prudent. It's just the name we've given to a certain set of observations not matching how we believe the universe works. We're still piecing together the details.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Relevant xkcd tooltip: https://xkcd.com/1489 https://xkcd.com/1489
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Do you suppose everything is explainable? Gravity feels to me like the sort of thing that just sort of is. I'm all for better characterizations of it, but I'm not holding my breath for an answer to: why?
  - jepj57 2y ago
    Everything may be explainable, just not by humanity. How does our biology affect the limits of what we can comprehend?
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      Oh plenty of ways probably. I expect there are perspectives out there which would have a look at our biggest questions and find them to be mundane with obvious answers but which would themselves boggle at concepts that we consider elementary. But here I am in this body, and not that one, so I'm content to accept an axiom or two.
  - aaronblohowiak 2y ago
    the question is depth and quality of explainability as determined by the predictive power those explanations provide...
SecretDreams 2y ago
> My old Uni (Manchester) doubled down hard on the work of Geim and Novoselov by building a dedicated "Graphene Institute", after they got the Nobel Prize, but even 15 years after that award most people are still trying to figure out what does it all actually mean really? Not just in terms of the theory of physics, but how useful is this stuff, in real world usage? That's the beauty of real research. There's no guarantees it'll pan out. But it's generally worth doing and spending (sometimes decades of) time exploring. Too many people have become infatuated with instant gratification. It's pervasive even in young, scientific minds. The real gratification is failing that same test 100 times until you finally land on a variation that might work. And then figuring out why it worked. Edit: And if that success never comes, the gratification is graduating and moving on to more solvable problems, but bringing with you the scientific methods you learned along the way. Scientists might spend their whole lives working on something that won't work and that's okay. If that isn't for you, go into product dev.
tasty_freeze 2y ago
When I was a kid, magnets seemed magical. I'm 60 now, and they still seem like magic, despite always having some on hand to play with.
- Synaesthesia 2y ago
  Magnets, how do they work? It's surprisingly complicated actually!
  - pelagicAustral 2y ago
    Miracles!

ggddv 2y ago

It’s interesting to think what in people’s personal perception makes them find strange thing interesting or scary or boring. Especially when it comes to grapheme.

desdenova 2y ago
Imagine doing computing on grapheme clusters.
- HappMacDonald 2y ago
  That's what I thought LLMs did

aaronblohowiak 2y ago

I still don’t believe explanations for gravity…let alone dark matter!

hansvm 2y ago
Not believing an explanation for dark matter seems prudent. It's just the name we've given to a certain set of observations not matching how we believe the universe works. We're still piecing together the details.
moffkalast 2y ago
Relevant xkcd tooltip: https://xkcd.com/1489 https://xkcd.com/1489
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Do you suppose everything is explainable? Gravity feels to me like the sort of thing that just sort of is. I'm all for better characterizations of it, but I'm not holding my breath for an answer to: why?
- jepj57 2y ago
  Everything may be explainable, just not by humanity. How does our biology affect the limits of what we can comprehend?
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    Oh plenty of ways probably. I expect there are perspectives out there which would have a look at our biggest questions and find them to be mundane with obvious answers but which would themselves boggle at concepts that we consider elementary. But here I am in this body, and not that one, so I'm content to accept an axiom or two.
- aaronblohowiak 2y ago
  the question is depth and quality of explainability as determined by the predictive power those explanations provide...

SecretDreams 2y ago

> My old Uni (Manchester) doubled down hard on the work of Geim and Novoselov by building a dedicated "Graphene Institute", after they got the Nobel Prize, but even 15 years after that award most people are still trying to figure out what does it all actually mean really? Not just in terms of the theory of physics, but how useful is this stuff, in real world usage? That's the beauty of real research. There's no guarantees it'll pan out. But it's generally worth doing and spending (sometimes decades of) time exploring. Too many people have become infatuated with instant gratification. It's pervasive even in young, scientific minds. The real gratification is failing that same test 100 times until you finally land on a variation that might work. And then figuring out why it worked. Edit: And if that success never comes, the gratification is graduating and moving on to more solvable problems, but bringing with you the scientific methods you learned along the way. Scientists might spend their whole lives working on something that won't work and that's okay. If that isn't for you, go into product dev.

tasty_freeze 2y ago

When I was a kid, magnets seemed magical. I'm 60 now, and they still seem like magic, despite always having some on hand to play with.

Synaesthesia 2y ago
Magnets, how do they work? It's surprisingly complicated actually!
- pelagicAustral 2y ago
  Miracles!