3 ms·

By some perspective, what made us unique was our ability to have a hint on the future, pattern recognition, superstition, religion and then science gave us a gr

by gmuslera 11mo ago

By some perspective, what made us unique was our ability to have a hint on the future, pattern recognition, superstition, religion and then science gave us a grasp of the outcome of what happens in a future, usually after an action by ourselves. Things are of bad luck, or a sin, or should not be done because some negative outcome. So, following that line of thinking, what will come next are better predictive capabilities, taking more out of guessing or "this is random" and more deterministic. Think in psichohistory telling what will happen with cultures and civilizations for centuries giving the current state of things. Anyway, the "we have AI, so will be soon no more things to discover" is similar to what was thought at the end of the XIX century that everything was discovered and only increasing precision was left. At the very least, we have a lot of learning about ourselves and how we understand reality, in the light of what AI could uncover with different methods than the traditional ones.

MangoToupe 11mo ago
> So, following that line of thinking, what will come next are better predictive capabilities You can also view science as a rejection of the ability to be able to predict (arbitrary) things. Any illusion otherwise is simply seemingly reliable knowledge of the past and present. The rise of eg disinformation and misinformation, siloed communication, the replication crisis could presage a future where confidence is generally lower than the past, and predictive power is more limited. I caution heavily against the idea that what you perceive as "progress" is inevitable or will follow past trends
- gmuslera 11mo ago
  Reality is complicated. The future may be unknowable from a strict point of view. But educated guesses are better than just random. Not for lotto numbers, but to take better decisions. Deciding that everything is potentially false, biased, or unreliable and so doing whatever your guts (that are also biased) tell you may have a worse outcome.
quickening 11mo ago
> XIX century I’m curious. Why did you write it this way vs. “19th”? People from 400 AD to 1400 AD used to write it that way. I’m assuming you’re either very old or a history buff.
- gmuslera 11mo ago
  Or a human that does the LLM trick of recalling how the first reference I've read about that was written.

MangoToupe 11mo ago

> So, following that line of thinking, what will come next are better predictive capabilities You can also view science as a rejection of the ability to be able to predict (arbitrary) things. Any illusion otherwise is simply seemingly reliable knowledge of the past and present. The rise of eg disinformation and misinformation, siloed communication, the replication crisis could presage a future where confidence is generally lower than the past, and predictive power is more limited. I caution heavily against the idea that what you perceive as "progress" is inevitable or will follow past trends

gmuslera 11mo ago
Reality is complicated. The future may be unknowable from a strict point of view. But educated guesses are better than just random. Not for lotto numbers, but to take better decisions. Deciding that everything is potentially false, biased, or unreliable and so doing whatever your guts (that are also biased) tell you may have a worse outcome.

quickening 11mo ago

> XIX century I’m curious. Why did you write it this way vs. “19th”? People from 400 AD to 1400 AD used to write it that way. I’m assuming you’re either very old or a history buff.

gmuslera 11mo ago
Or a human that does the LLM trick of recalling how the first reference I've read about that was written.