It occurs to me that although the term "science" appears quite a few times on The Tar Pit, I never sat to explain it until now1. But as it happens, someone on ye olde interwebs stirred me up (archived) with his comment on Pythagoras' theorem2. I'm not even going to comment his review of some spreader of the One True Religion of pantsuitism, but I'll take my time to observe that it's been quite a while since any recent writing stirred something inside me; which means that, well, he must be on to something! So let me take this occasion to at best clarify, or at worst to butcher poor Popper.
In any case, the first ingredient of science is observation, which can be defined as conscious perception. We're not going to go into the iffy problem of consciousness, but an example of this specific difference is that of animal perception: both humans and dogs can learn through pavlovian means, i.e. repetition, but humans alone can learn by becoming consciously aware of something. Another example is the old Eastern adage about the tree that falls without anyone there to hear it -- in the absence of an observer, both the tree and the hearing vanish as meaningful objects of contemplation, which is coincidentally the fundamental observation (sic!) that is shared by both Zen Buddhism and quantum physics.
Observation lies at the heart of something called "inductive" reasoning. This is through no coincidence what the AI folks are trying to achieve: build a program that is a sort of tabula rasa, then feed it with a large amount of inputs and then see whether the program has "learned" anything. Of course, the "AI" is as much a result of the input data as it is of the program, or the so-called "model". By the way, that's why they call them "large" language models: because they can absorb large quantities (about as large as a datacenter can hold) of data and through this absorption, form some correlations that mimick the structure of knowledge3. Anyways, inductive reasoning is just another name for generalization: some dudes near the construction site cat-called you, so as a result men are jerks; this is pure inductive reasoning, as false as it may sound. Which isn't to say that all inductive reasoning is false, but on the other hand all inductive reasoning is falsifiable4.
There is however at least another type of reasoning, called "de-ductive", which relies on logical inferences based on observations. I sure as fuck don't have the space to do an introductive course on logic, but I suppose you've been at the particular class where they taught you e.g. modus ponens, e.g. if you go to work you get paid; you go to work, so as a result, you get paid. Here "you go to work" is called a "premise" in the first sentence, while in the second sentence it's an observation. I don't have time to go into quantification either, but in the first sentence, "you go to work" may be that which you call a "variable", while in the second it's what you may call a "value".
Now, this whole science thing gets quite iffy once again when you consider statements such as: the entropy of a system increases with the number of microstates of said system, or:
S = k ln Ω
where k is called the Boltzmann constant5, ln is the natural logarithm and Ω is the number of microscopic states of a system, i.e. the total number of states of each molecule in the system6. S is something called "entropy" and it's measured in Joules per Kelvin, the first being a measure of energy, while the second one of temperature. And in case you don't have the patience for an introductory course in thermodynamics, you can trust me, just like you trust all other "science", that as a system reaches equilibrium, its entropy tends to rise, which is how "maximum entropy" and "the heat death of the universe" are equivalent macroscopic states. In any case, you can draw this observation by placing an object next to a source of heat -- say, a pot full of water next to your stove, if you still own that kind of thing -- and then take it away. When the source of heat disappears, the temperature of water will tend to reach room temperature in some given amount of time.
Anyway: not only is the statement above inductive, that is, drawn from direct observation, but as far as we know it is also unfalsifiable! It is in principle falsifiable, meaning that there is some non-zero probability that the overall entropy of the observable universe is decreasing at some given time7, but so far the lack of evidence has led sciencefolks to call this the second principle of thermodynamics, not the second theorem. So there's no known proof of this just like there's no proof of the existence of God, and there is of course an entire panoply of deductions to draw from this principle and lo! they all hold as far as "we" know. The major problem being that most folks don't, because they haven't observed shit.
Trust me however, or better yet, don't! when I say that these examples in physics -- say what you will, observations based on shapes drawn in the sand don't count as science -- are among the few lucky ones to still hold. Whatever science you hold dear nowadays, from climate to sociology to psychology to what have you8, is quite frail. And this is quite convenient too, because then our dear scientist can produce more science to science the science and advance the advancement, isn't it?
And I suppose that's where we draw the line and we press stop. Namely, at the point where all your "science" is in fact cheap politics. Sure, Newton was as much a politician as he was a scientist when he said that for a given action there's an equal and opposite reaction; but let us not compare Newton with today's reality TV actors slash "employees of the people". Sure, your solar panels may run on Millikan and Einstein's observations and deductions respectively, but the fact alone that science is a basis for technology9 doesn't say anything about the latter's quality. And at least in one particular framing, the latter is pure religion.
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I know I'm repeating myself like a broken record by now, but: to myself, first and foremost. For what is blogging other than an impossible attempt in productive masturbation. ↩
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I even left him a comment and meanwhile he answered. But anyways, I'll reproduce it here:
Matematica se bazează pe axiome tot așa cum termodinamica se bazează pe postulate. Problema fiind, totuși, că una din ele nu-i știință.
which translates to:
Mathematics is based upon axioms just like thermodynamics is based upon postulates. The problem being, however, that one of them is not science.
The original author's own writing is left as exercise for the studious student of Romanian. ↩
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Who knows, maybe at some point the thing in question will start developing consciousness, right? Well then, why don't they try the same experiments with amoebas? It's certainly cheaper, if maybe not that effective.
Better yet, I suppose fungi have some potential. And I'm not even kidding: to me, biocomputing looks like a more promising area of research than any sort of "quantum" computing can muster to achieve in the next century. ↩
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Eh, I suppose Taleb's black swan is a good example to start explaining this, but I'm too lazy to go into it... err, I mean, all books contain words and some are written by Taleb. Go look it up, you have the sum of all knowledge at your fingertips etc. ↩
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It was such a constant that this equation was encrusted on his grave. ↩
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By the way, we haven't really defined the notion of "system", have we? Well... ↩
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We haven't defined "time" either, for what it's worth. No, I'm not fucking kidding, I'm just proving a point without so much as trying. ↩
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By the way, computer "science" isn't science either! It's merely a cheap offshoot of discrete mathematics which only became fashionable at the end of the twentieth century because machines go brrr. They go brrr and they provide neatly drawn cats, what. ↩
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And moreover, the mathematics supporting it is just that: a support, an aide for conceptualization, nothing more. Which is why uncoincidentally it breaks so often in the face of reality. ↩
> Better yet, I suppose fungi have some potential
That sounds like the perfect way to end up with the Cronenbergian ambiguously-cybernetic-sinister-eldritch-goo scenario, as seen in e.g. the game SOMA. I can't wait ^_^
Why stop at fungi though. In a way, they've already tried to stuff a language model in more advanced algorithms, like when they taught gorillas sign language. It went pretty well, too, until the foremost exponent, some Harambe I think, blurted out "I have information that could potentially lead to Hillary Clinton's arrest" and apparently suffered an incident the very next day.
*More advanced brains, I mean
> Why stop at fungi though. In a way, they've already tried to stuff a language model in more advanced brains, like when they taught gorillas sign language
Just out of curiosity, who tried that more exactly?
In a certain framing that's precisely what "they're" aiming to do with pretty much every pleb on ourdemocracy's green Earth. And come to think of it, what else are you to do with eight billion souls? If they let "we the people" to their devices (instead of, say, Apple's), there wouldn't be anything left of anything within maybe a couple of years. This is why communism is all the rockin' fashion all around the world nowadays, they (by which I mean the ruling classes) are trying out all the available options until they literally start using bipedals as biofuel.
So I suppose this postmodern version of communism punts on Heidegger's "standing reserve" idea, materialized in practice in the observation that using folks, instead of straight up throwing them to the proverbial trash bin, is a winning, or at least a minimized loss situation. Bipedals are an environmental issue, aren't they? What are you gonna do, shoot them? that's way too many bullets. And say that you do, what next? how is the proverbial trash bin going to look that holds seven billion bipedal husks?
I guess by now the more sensitive among the folks reading this are going to see me as needlessly cynic or nihilist. But really, put yourself in Gates' or some other unnamed magnate's skin: you gotta keep the planet running, all the while making sure that the terribilist kids who wanna destroy Mona Lisa stay put. So what the fuck are you gonna do now?
If there's going to be a WW3 (which I seriously believe by now, even though most of it will be reality TV), it's going to be the perfect pretext to clean up the population.
Well, what with overeducation, and the relationship between the sexes being completely destroyed, birth rates are irreversibly below replacement nearly everywhere in the world, soon Africa too. I know I'll never have a woman, and more and more gen Z'ers I know about are in the same situation. And we're talking about individuals who are actually chill and can pass as human!
So the population will go down massively, WW3 or no WW3. But perhaps not fast enough? Getting billions killed nearly overnight would present certain advantages. The bandaid would be ripped faster, we'd only have a huge shock overnight instead of the horrific decay due to population aging and insufficient productives supporting doddering wrecks. Since most deaths would obviously be male, the remaining males would find themselves in a seller's market (which is the only way the 50s sexual ideal ever really worked anyway). Fuck. Maybe the elites have a point, haha.
We might as well enjoy the decline until the nukes fly. Have that beer in that place, before it gets blown to smithereens and we have to resort to brewing dubious slurry from radioactive mushrooms while dodging killer drones?
The predictions stated in the Fallout premise are holding quite well so far, aren't they? The timeline is a bit different, but other than that, I'd say they're pretty close.
I'm not sure about the nukes. I'm pretty sure about the drones though, they'll be a massive asset this time around. Which makes me quite skeptical of a potential comeback of males in the field. They'll sit and play war at home for a while, at least until the data gathered from the playthroughs can be used to train a LLM for battlefield conditions.
There are some real strategic implications on this and I bet that some of them aren't yet visible to either side. We'll see, I guess.
Lucian, what have you done! You've given "them" ideas again:
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/robot-mushroom-biohybrid-robotics-cornell-b2606970.html
Ahahahah, I swear, I logged in because this was *precisely* what I wanted to share!
Let's also include an archive link to the article and quote the abstract in full: