8 ms·

Here is the one thing that really keeps me awake at night: what if our science was the equivalent of a bunch of ants in a typical ant hill in anyone of our back

Here is the one thing that really keeps me awake at night: what if our science was the equivalent of a bunch of ants in a typical ant hill in anyone of our backyards, defining a mechanism or "method" through which they have explained for themselves the nature of the solar system? That's the one thing. And I can't shake it off.

undershirt 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology
- hyperliner 12y ago
  Useful. Thanks!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
leorocky 12y ago
Science answers questions with evidence. None of this armchair conjecturing about what ifs. You don't increase smartphone screen resolutions and put rovers on mars with what ifs. Tangible benefits are the fruit of science. Objective results. None of this subjective shit you get from quackery. There's no room for interpretation when a SpaceX Dragon docks at the space station, that happened. Unless you are into solipsism. There is nothing to shake off when it comes to science. If good science led us to wrong answers it is because of insufficient data, bad process, and human error. Science is the best tool we have ever created. Just look at your smartphone. The transistors in that thing are not individually visible with the human eye but you can post your selfies to snapchat just fine right? Right. Those transistors are measured in nanometers.
Detrus 12y ago
What makes you think ants are so stupid? They farm, own slaves and have organized raids. Of course, the ones in your backyard typically don't do that. Those are like boring human villages.
- hyperliner 12y ago
  I think they are very smart. They just don't really understand the solar system. And i think it is difficult for them to do.
  - prawn 12y ago
    "They just don't really understand the solar system. And i think it is difficult for them to do." You could say that about many humans too right now, and certainly all humans up until the last however many years.
    - hyperliner 12y ago
      Exactly my original point, but referencing those ants who think they know the solar system.
  - mtdewcmu 12y ago
    How can you tell? If ants were able to understand the solar system, would you expect them to behave differently?
    - hyperliner 12y ago
      They would know I exist, and that I would massacre them every time they set foot on my yard, with my advanced chemical weapons of mass ant destruction. But they keep coming, and dying. They don't seem to be aware of me, let alone the solar system.
  - LesZedCB 12y ago
    An ant as an individual is smart enough to recognize food and bring it back, do basic social behaviors. However, the real intelligence of ants is emergent from the entire colony. http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/Collective-Intelligence-in-Ant-Colonies http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/Collective-Inte...
autokad 12y ago
dont let leorocky get you down. if the universe keeps expanding, eventually it will expand at the speed of light and everything that is not gravitationally locked with us (wich only includes the milky way and about 5 or so other galaixies) will be moving faster than the speed of light and will be impossible to observe in any way. in a sense, it means leo is actually wrong. if an intelligent race comes into being after said event, it could be true that no amount of science will ever be able to show that the rest of the universe existed. that also means some other phenomenon may have occurred that will make us as just as useless at understanding what happened as ants are at knowing/exploring the stars. that is, if certain theories about the expansion of the galaxy is true.
- hyperliner 12y ago
  thank you autokad.
- leorocky 12y ago
  This doesn't make me wrong about science, it's just that by then it will be will not have the data to figure out what happened. You can't see the other galaxies anymore. That's not a problem with science, that's a problem of insufficient data. It may be the case an intelligent could figure things out by looking at the evidence available to them within their finite, expanded universe. Space will still be expanding, there will still be red shift, there will still be gravity. And science will be the tool to use to figure this stuff out.
graycat 12y ago
Newton's law of gravity? Worked great for, what, 300+ years? Still, for a wide range of situations, it's darned accurate. Is it 'correct'? Nope: Einstein's law of gravity is more accurate, especially in what in our solar system neighborhood would have to be regarded as extreme situations. Are we sure that Einstein's law of gravity is the really 'correct' one or the 'last' one we will discover? Nope. Indeed, that doubt is part of why the article got so excited about using one black hole orbiting another one to "test" Einstein's law of gravity. We keep testing that law because we will learn something, either (1) something doesn't fit and we have to ditch the law or (2) the law fits and we gain more 'confidence' in the law. You can look at it this way: The stuff we 'accept' now is what we have dreamed up and that has passed some apparently 'significant' (don't mean statistics here) tests and so far never really failed a test. Net, stuff 'accepted' at present is what appears to work so far. But, in physics and cosmology, we have some issues that, at least intuitively, appear to be potential biggies: (1) What happened before the big bang? Can we get some clues from the data we have on what might have happened before the big bang -- some physicists have tried to look. (2) What's with this stuff about dark energy and dark matter? (3) Why does it appear that there is much more matter than anti-matter? (4) What's with neutrinos and how they 'change'? (5) What can we dig out of 'spooky action at a distance', that is, Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox? So, maybe more progress understanding one of these biggies will cause us to ditch some of our currently 'accepted' results, look for, and maybe find some new results. Could everything we have seen so far be just some light show put on just for our amusement? We can't say. So far, it appears that somehow mathematics works shockingly well; why? We don't know. That there is a law of gravity that works as well as even Newton's might be seen as surprising. That is, why doesn't the 'law of gravity' change each 10 minutes? Well, some things do change 'randomly', and for them the only laws we have are probabilistic. Newton's law is not probabilistic because so far it appears to work the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, that is, doesn't change. Or our science is what we have found that in some important sense doesn't change, e.g., we can 'reproduce' results. Why are such results possible? Not at all clear. Even if what we are seeing is just some light show for our amusement, still we get some utility, e.g., via applications to engineering, etc. So, the Internet works because Maxwell's equations of electro-magnetism continue to work as they have for 100+ years now. > And I can't shake it off. Relax and enjoy the light show or whatever the heck it is. There's a lot to be amazed about, curious about, etc. And we really do make progress, astounding progress. E.g., we've made a lot of progress since I studied physics i college. The math I studied has been more stable!
anon4 12y ago
Well, for one thing we haven't found any other anthills and that's very weird. Other than that, just Stay Calm and Keep Doing Science until you've scienced everything. The analogy with ants is weird, in that ants don't seem to be sentient and don't appear to have ant scientists that are trying to understand the mysteries of the universe. That makes it a bit hard to answer you on the level of the analogy, as such an answer would need to start with "assuming ants were sentient and had physicists, ...", from which point on the rest would be pure anthropocentric conjecture. We humans are a bit unique in that there are individuals who go "well I'm bored, guess I'll go observe the sun, moon and other bright discs in the night sky for decades and record their movements as precisely as I can, so that some other person, most probably of a race I've never seen from a place far beyond any horizon I've viewed, can read them centuries later and use them to come up with a heliocentric model of the solar system and from there on other mad toffs with nothing better to do could come up with the theory of gravity or something". There is no reason to believe we will never ever find out some fundamental properties of the world, given enough time. If something exists, it can be interacted with and if it can be interacted with, it can be studied. If we can't interact with it ourselves, we'll make machines to interact with it. If we cannot make machines to interact with it, we'll study the results of other things interacting with it that we can observe. If it cannot be interacted with in any way via any method, its existence is largely a philosophical question. It can be argued that we don't (and won't) have the absolute most simple, exact and perfect formulations for the rules of nature, but arguing whether those rules have a one true form and if there aren't equivalent ways to state them is again a largely philosophical question.

undershirt 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

hyperliner 12y ago
Useful. Thanks!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

leorocky 12y ago

Science answers questions with evidence. None of this armchair conjecturing about what ifs. You don't increase smartphone screen resolutions and put rovers on mars with what ifs. Tangible benefits are the fruit of science. Objective results. None of this subjective shit you get from quackery. There's no room for interpretation when a SpaceX Dragon docks at the space station, that happened. Unless you are into solipsism. There is nothing to shake off when it comes to science. If good science led us to wrong answers it is because of insufficient data, bad process, and human error. Science is the best tool we have ever created. Just look at your smartphone. The transistors in that thing are not individually visible with the human eye but you can post your selfies to snapchat just fine right? Right. Those transistors are measured in nanometers.

Detrus 12y ago

What makes you think ants are so stupid? They farm, own slaves and have organized raids. Of course, the ones in your backyard typically don't do that. Those are like boring human villages.

hyperliner 12y ago
I think they are very smart. They just don't really understand the solar system. And i think it is difficult for them to do.
- prawn 12y ago
  "They just don't really understand the solar system. And i think it is difficult for them to do." You could say that about many humans too right now, and certainly all humans up until the last however many years.
  - hyperliner 12y ago
    Exactly my original point, but referencing those ants who think they know the solar system.
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  How can you tell? If ants were able to understand the solar system, would you expect them to behave differently?
  - hyperliner 12y ago
    They would know I exist, and that I would massacre them every time they set foot on my yard, with my advanced chemical weapons of mass ant destruction. But they keep coming, and dying. They don't seem to be aware of me, let alone the solar system.
- LesZedCB 12y ago
  An ant as an individual is smart enough to recognize food and bring it back, do basic social behaviors. However, the real intelligence of ants is emergent from the entire colony. http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/Collective-Intelligence-in-Ant-Colonies http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/Collective-Inte...

autokad 12y ago

dont let leorocky get you down. if the universe keeps expanding, eventually it will expand at the speed of light and everything that is not gravitationally locked with us (wich only includes the milky way and about 5 or so other galaixies) will be moving faster than the speed of light and will be impossible to observe in any way. in a sense, it means leo is actually wrong. if an intelligent race comes into being after said event, it could be true that no amount of science will ever be able to show that the rest of the universe existed. that also means some other phenomenon may have occurred that will make us as just as useless at understanding what happened as ants are at knowing/exploring the stars. that is, if certain theories about the expansion of the galaxy is true.

hyperliner 12y ago
thank you autokad.
leorocky 12y ago
This doesn't make me wrong about science, it's just that by then it will be will not have the data to figure out what happened. You can't see the other galaxies anymore. That's not a problem with science, that's a problem of insufficient data. It may be the case an intelligent could figure things out by looking at the evidence available to them within their finite, expanded universe. Space will still be expanding, there will still be red shift, there will still be gravity. And science will be the tool to use to figure this stuff out.

graycat 12y ago

Newton's law of gravity? Worked great for, what, 300+ years? Still, for a wide range of situations, it's darned accurate. Is it 'correct'? Nope: Einstein's law of gravity is more accurate, especially in what in our solar system neighborhood would have to be regarded as extreme situations. Are we sure that Einstein's law of gravity is the really 'correct' one or the 'last' one we will discover? Nope. Indeed, that doubt is part of why the article got so excited about using one black hole orbiting another one to "test" Einstein's law of gravity. We keep testing that law because we will learn something, either (1) something doesn't fit and we have to ditch the law or (2) the law fits and we gain more 'confidence' in the law. You can look at it this way: The stuff we 'accept' now is what we have dreamed up and that has passed some apparently 'significant' (don't mean statistics here) tests and so far never really failed a test. Net, stuff 'accepted' at present is what appears to work so far. But, in physics and cosmology, we have some issues that, at least intuitively, appear to be potential biggies: (1) What happened before the big bang? Can we get some clues from the data we have on what might have happened before the big bang -- some physicists have tried to look. (2) What's with this stuff about dark energy and dark matter? (3) Why does it appear that there is much more matter than anti-matter? (4) What's with neutrinos and how they 'change'? (5) What can we dig out of 'spooky action at a distance', that is, Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox? So, maybe more progress understanding one of these biggies will cause us to ditch some of our currently 'accepted' results, look for, and maybe find some new results. Could everything we have seen so far be just some light show put on just for our amusement? We can't say. So far, it appears that somehow mathematics works shockingly well; why? We don't know. That there is a law of gravity that works as well as even Newton's might be seen as surprising. That is, why doesn't the 'law of gravity' change each 10 minutes? Well, some things do change 'randomly', and for them the only laws we have are probabilistic. Newton's law is not probabilistic because so far it appears to work the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, that is, doesn't change. Or our science is what we have found that in some important sense doesn't change, e.g., we can 'reproduce' results. Why are such results possible? Not at all clear. Even if what we are seeing is just some light show for our amusement, still we get some utility, e.g., via applications to engineering, etc. So, the Internet works because Maxwell's equations of electro-magnetism continue to work as they have for 100+ years now. > And I can't shake it off. Relax and enjoy the light show or whatever the heck it is. There's a lot to be amazed about, curious about, etc. And we really do make progress, astounding progress. E.g., we've made a lot of progress since I studied physics i college. The math I studied has been more stable!

anon4 12y ago

Well, for one thing we haven't found any other anthills and that's very weird. Other than that, just Stay Calm and Keep Doing Science until you've scienced everything. The analogy with ants is weird, in that ants don't seem to be sentient and don't appear to have ant scientists that are trying to understand the mysteries of the universe. That makes it a bit hard to answer you on the level of the analogy, as such an answer would need to start with "assuming ants were sentient and had physicists, ...", from which point on the rest would be pure anthropocentric conjecture. We humans are a bit unique in that there are individuals who go "well I'm bored, guess I'll go observe the sun, moon and other bright discs in the night sky for decades and record their movements as precisely as I can, so that some other person, most probably of a race I've never seen from a place far beyond any horizon I've viewed, can read them centuries later and use them to come up with a heliocentric model of the solar system and from there on other mad toffs with nothing better to do could come up with the theory of gravity or something". There is no reason to believe we will never ever find out some fundamental properties of the world, given enough time. If something exists, it can be interacted with and if it can be interacted with, it can be studied. If we can't interact with it ourselves, we'll make machines to interact with it. If we cannot make machines to interact with it, we'll study the results of other things interacting with it that we can observe. If it cannot be interacted with in any way via any method, its existence is largely a philosophical question. It can be argued that we don't (and won't) have the absolute most simple, exact and perfect formulations for the rules of nature, but arguing whether those rules have a one true form and if there aren't equivalent ways to state them is again a largely philosophical question.