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The weather thing doesn’t seem… realistic. Have you heard of chaotic systems?

smileysteve 1y ago
It sounds a lot like a farmer's almanac... Which are reasonably accurate (ignoring chaos) and practically free (passion work)
awesome_dude 1y ago
We always think things are unsolveable, and impossible to decipher, right up until we do, in fact, solve them and decipher them. Anything is possible, well, except for getting the next season of Firefly Edit: FTR I think that weather prediction is, indeed, solveable. We just don't have the computing power/algorithms that fully model and calculate the state.. yet
- catlifeonmars 1y ago
  Then I don’t think you fully grasp the nature of weather. Sure, anything is possible, but some things are much more likely than others, and small changes in weather months away is very very far down on the list of things that are likely to be solvable. I’d even hold out hope for another season firefly <3
  - Theodores 1y ago
    I worked in weather for a while and the forecasters might as well have been betting on the horse races, the interpretation of the charts was very much the same psychology. The model did its thing but there was still an aspect of interpretation that was needed to convert data to a story for a few minutes on TV. For longer range forecasting the task was quite easy for the meteorologists, at least for the UK. Storm systems could be tracked from Africa across the Atlantic to North America and back across the Atlantic to the UK. Hence, with some well known phenomena such as that, my meteorologist friends would have a good general idea of what to expect with no model needed, just an understanding of the observations, obsessively followed, with all the enthusiasm of someone that bets on horses. My forecasting friends could tell me what to expect weeks out, however, the exact time the rain would fall or even what day would not be a certain bet, but they were rarely wrong about the overall picture. The atmosphere is far from a closed system, there only has to be one volcano fart somewhere on the planet to throw things out of whack and that is not something that is easy to predict. Predicting how the hard to predict volcano or solar flare affects the weather in a few weeks is beyond what I expect from AI. I am still waiting for e-commerce platforms to be replaced with Blockchain dapps, and I will add AGI weather forecasting to the queue of not going to happen. Imagine if it hallucinates. Will AI put bookmakers out of business? Nope. Same goes with weather.
    - awesome_dude 1y ago
      Thanks for your anecdote, it's valuable when discussing the possibilities to start by saying that it's impossible because you don't know anyone that did it
      - awesome_dude 1y ago
        It's great to see the level of discourse on Hacker News is... insults and pile ons All this "HN is so much better than other Social Media" is thus proved demonstrably false.
  - awesome_dude 1y ago
    Your response is, that you don't understand, so nobody else should.
    - catlifeonmars 1y ago
      That’s not what I said. But ok. Weather systems exhibit chaotic behavior which means that small changes to initial conditions have far reaching effects. This is why even the best weather models are only effective at most a few weeks out. It’s not because we don’t understand how weather works, it’s because the system fundamentally behaves in a way that requires keeping track of many more measurements than is physically possible. It’s precisely because we do understand this phenomenon that we can say with certainty that prediction at those time scales with that accuracy is not possible. There is not some magic formula waiting to be discovered. This isn’t to say that weather prediction can’t improve (e.g I don’t claim we have the best possible weather models now), but that predictions reach an asymptotic limit due to chaos. There are a handful of extremely simple and well understood systems (I would not call weather simple) that also exhibit this kind of behavior: a common example is some sets of initial conditions of a double-jointed pendulum. The physics are very well understood. Another perhaps more famous one is the three body problem. These two both show that even if you have the exact equations of motion, chaotic systems still cannot be perfectly modeled.
      - awesome_dude 1y ago
        > That’s not what I said. But ok. This is what you did say > Then I don’t think you fully grasp the nature of weather. Like - how the fck would you know? Even more so, why the fck does your ignorance and inability to think of possibilities, or fully grasp the nature of anything make you think that that sort of comment is remotely appropriate. You have the uniquely fortunate position to never be able to realise how inept and incompetent you are, but putting that on to other people is definitely only showing everyone your ignorance to the facts of life. And there was no reply - just downvoting people, like a champ...
        habinero 1y ago
awesome_dude 1y ago
If anyone needs an example of an extremely limited imagination, matched with a strong need to attack anyone that dares to think what could be... then look no further than this guy and this thread.
ACCount37 1y ago
"All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control." Not something that can be solved just by throwing more AI computation at it though.
- awesome_dude 1y ago
  > Not something that can be solved just by throwing more AI computation at it though. I said "With the help of AI" no "Solved by AI" The model is complex, and currently takes time on super computers to crunch through the numbers to give us an approximation, but that doesn't mean that it's never going to be fully modelled, or that we won't find a better way of approximating things where the long range forecasts are more accurate. Currently the 24 hour forecast is highly reliable Three days reliable Five days is getting there ( it's still subject to change) These things can be solved by throwing lots more compute at them (and the models improved)
  - ACCount37 1y ago
    Chaos theory says "nope". It's never going to be fully modelled, straight up.
    - awesome_dude 1y ago
      It's only impossibile until it's not
      - ACCount37 1y ago
        Chaos theory. Look. It. Up. Avalanche effect COMPLETELY PREVENTS certain things from being predictable.
        awesome_dude 1y ago
        So, you can yell and scream all you like but everything, and I mean literally everything that we know was once "unknowable" "impossible" "complete chaos" "unpredictable" There is only one thing that a person can never know, and that is the limit of their ignorance and incompetence.

It sounds a lot like a farmer's almanac... Which are reasonably accurate (ignoring chaos) and practically free (passion work)

awesome_dude 1y ago

We always think things are unsolveable, and impossible to decipher, right up until we do, in fact, solve them and decipher them. Anything is possible, well, except for getting the next season of Firefly Edit: FTR I think that weather prediction is, indeed, solveable. We just don't have the computing power/algorithms that fully model and calculate the state.. yet

catlifeonmars 1y ago
Then I don’t think you fully grasp the nature of weather. Sure, anything is possible, but some things are much more likely than others, and small changes in weather months away is very very far down on the list of things that are likely to be solvable. I’d even hold out hope for another season firefly <3
- Theodores 1y ago
  I worked in weather for a while and the forecasters might as well have been betting on the horse races, the interpretation of the charts was very much the same psychology. The model did its thing but there was still an aspect of interpretation that was needed to convert data to a story for a few minutes on TV. For longer range forecasting the task was quite easy for the meteorologists, at least for the UK. Storm systems could be tracked from Africa across the Atlantic to North America and back across the Atlantic to the UK. Hence, with some well known phenomena such as that, my meteorologist friends would have a good general idea of what to expect with no model needed, just an understanding of the observations, obsessively followed, with all the enthusiasm of someone that bets on horses. My forecasting friends could tell me what to expect weeks out, however, the exact time the rain would fall or even what day would not be a certain bet, but they were rarely wrong about the overall picture. The atmosphere is far from a closed system, there only has to be one volcano fart somewhere on the planet to throw things out of whack and that is not something that is easy to predict. Predicting how the hard to predict volcano or solar flare affects the weather in a few weeks is beyond what I expect from AI. I am still waiting for e-commerce platforms to be replaced with Blockchain dapps, and I will add AGI weather forecasting to the queue of not going to happen. Imagine if it hallucinates. Will AI put bookmakers out of business? Nope. Same goes with weather.
  - awesome_dude 1y ago
    Thanks for your anecdote, it's valuable when discussing the possibilities to start by saying that it's impossible because you don't know anyone that did it
    - awesome_dude 1y ago
      It's great to see the level of discourse on Hacker News is... insults and pile ons All this "HN is so much better than other Social Media" is thus proved demonstrably false.
- awesome_dude 1y ago
  Your response is, that you don't understand, so nobody else should.
  - catlifeonmars 1y ago
    That’s not what I said. But ok. Weather systems exhibit chaotic behavior which means that small changes to initial conditions have far reaching effects. This is why even the best weather models are only effective at most a few weeks out. It’s not because we don’t understand how weather works, it’s because the system fundamentally behaves in a way that requires keeping track of many more measurements than is physically possible. It’s precisely because we do understand this phenomenon that we can say with certainty that prediction at those time scales with that accuracy is not possible. There is not some magic formula waiting to be discovered. This isn’t to say that weather prediction can’t improve (e.g I don’t claim we have the best possible weather models now), but that predictions reach an asymptotic limit due to chaos. There are a handful of extremely simple and well understood systems (I would not call weather simple) that also exhibit this kind of behavior: a common example is some sets of initial conditions of a double-jointed pendulum. The physics are very well understood. Another perhaps more famous one is the three body problem. These two both show that even if you have the exact equations of motion, chaotic systems still cannot be perfectly modeled.
    - awesome_dude 1y ago
      > That’s not what I said. But ok. This is what you did say > Then I don’t think you fully grasp the nature of weather. Like - how the fck would you know? Even more so, why the fck does your ignorance and inability to think of possibilities, or fully grasp the nature of anything make you think that that sort of comment is remotely appropriate. You have the uniquely fortunate position to never be able to realise how inept and incompetent you are, but putting that on to other people is definitely only showing everyone your ignorance to the facts of life. And there was no reply - just downvoting people, like a champ...
      - habinero 1y ago

awesome_dude 1y ago

If anyone needs an example of an extremely limited imagination, matched with a strong need to attack anyone that dares to think what could be... then look no further than this guy and this thread.

ACCount37 1y ago

"All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control." Not something that can be solved just by throwing more AI computation at it though.

awesome_dude 1y ago
> Not something that can be solved just by throwing more AI computation at it though. I said "With the help of AI" no "Solved by AI" The model is complex, and currently takes time on super computers to crunch through the numbers to give us an approximation, but that doesn't mean that it's never going to be fully modelled, or that we won't find a better way of approximating things where the long range forecasts are more accurate. Currently the 24 hour forecast is highly reliable Three days reliable Five days is getting there ( it's still subject to change) These things can be solved by throwing lots more compute at them (and the models improved)
- ACCount37 1y ago
  Chaos theory says "nope". It's never going to be fully modelled, straight up.
  - awesome_dude 1y ago
    It's only impossibile until it's not
    - ACCount37 1y ago
      Chaos theory. Look. It. Up. Avalanche effect COMPLETELY PREVENTS certain things from being predictable.
      - awesome_dude 1y ago
        So, you can yell and scream all you like but everything, and I mean literally everything that we know was once "unknowable" "impossible" "complete chaos" "unpredictable" There is only one thing that a person can never know, and that is the limit of their ignorance and incompetence.