One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong With Our Conception of the Universe (space.com) 260
A reader shares a report form Space.com: There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis." The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc). If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy. In April, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope confirmed that the Universe is expanding about 9% faster than expected based on its trajectory seen shortly after the big bang.
"We are measuring something fundamentally different," said Adam Riess, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University. "One is a measurement of how fast the universe is expanding today, as we see it. The other is a prediction based on the physics of the early universe and on measurements of how fast it ought to be expanding. If these values don't agree, there becomes a very strong likelihood that we're missing something in the cosmological model that connects the two eras."
"We are measuring something fundamentally different," said Adam Riess, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University. "One is a measurement of how fast the universe is expanding today, as we see it. The other is a prediction based on the physics of the early universe and on measurements of how fast it ought to be expanding. If these values don't agree, there becomes a very strong likelihood that we're missing something in the cosmological model that connects the two eras."
Isn't science (Score:3)
exciting?
I'm just thrilled (Score:5, Insightful)
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2nd that, both science and scifi could get rather dull if we new everything about how the universe worked, long live ignorance!!!
Re:I'm just thrilled (Score:5, Insightful)
In science finding out you're wrong is like hitting the jackpot. Finding a disagreement between two things which ought to agree is a guarantee that careers and reputations will be made.
Re:I'm just thrilled (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm suspicious about the accuracy of the article. IIRC Cepheid variables are only used to measure the distance to relatively near-by objects. For an analogous measure to more distant objects the "standard supernova" (i.e. type 1a) is normally used.
Unfortunately, in the last couple of years it has appeared that this distance measurement needs refinement, as there are (at least?) two different classes of supernova that appear to be type 1a, and they produce different brightnesses. So there's going to need to be a bunch of corrections...but supernova don't hang around (when seen from a great enough distance) so new measurements can't be taken. And this is likely to mean that many of the older measurements are unreliable. (Some will be spot on, and others will be off.)
N.B.: I'm not an expert in this area, but this is derived from general reading. Consult an expert, but that expert needs to be up on recent studies of type 1a Supernovae.
Interesting (Score:4, Informative)
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Quantum Physics is pretty much something that, if this were a game, was artificially constructed to be exceptionally convoluted and unhelpful. The whole thing is kind of like a hint saying "Are you actually willing to believe this crap?". I would not be surprised if it turns out the whole thing is actually a lot simpler and the complexity is mostly generated by the minds of Quantum Physicists. Of course, this _would_ need a bit of yet unknown "magic", but there is ample room for that.
Re:Interesting (Score:4)
What if Quantum physics is one huge joke that the god(s) are playing on us? Every time we are getting close they/he or she, changes one of the numbers just to send us scurrying again.
Of course I'm only half joking here but it does seem like when we start to get close, something changes. I know the real reason is quantum physics is a really complex subject and we just don't understand all of it. But sometimes it does seem like a huge joke.
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One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong (Score:5, Funny)
. . . 42 . . . ?
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Actually, the first calculations looked fine, 42.000000 , but now they're at 42.0000000003485 and they don't know exactly how to interpret that.
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It's corrected to 41.5926
Or Maybe (Score:2, Offtopic)
We should admit that this contradicts the predictions related to the Big Bang hypothesis, and maybe the Universe is a different age.
Or maybe our lack of ability to measure long distances in space means that all the explanations explaining 14 billion year old red-shift are wrong. Maybe photons just die after that long. Then we don't even need a creation event to explain why we can't see forever.
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we can detect photons of the cosmic microwave background produced shortly after big bang, they don't die. force carriers with no rest mass have infinite range
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We should admit that this contradicts the predictions related to the Big Bang hypothesis, and maybe the Universe is a different age.
Or maybe our lack of ability to measure long distances in space means that all the explanations explaining 14 billion year old red-shift are wrong. Maybe photons just die after that long. Then we don't even need a creation event to explain why we can't see forever.
Or maybe people who know nothing about physics should speculate about it. Hint. Hint.
One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong (Score:2)
Units (Score:2)
scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years
Or 0.069 light-year per billion light-years.
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Or not.
Your units don't match - the scientists are using units of length/time/length, you're using length/length....
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Yup, whatever units you uae, it all works out to a frequency.
It may be easir to think of its inverse - a period.
Which is the time taken for the ubiverse to double in size,
It's science! (Score:2)
That's exactly how it is supposed to be!
New measurements, new facts and you adapt your theory and move on.
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That's exactly how it is supposed to be! New measurements, new facts and you adapt your theory and move on.
Except climate change. That science is SETTLED !
Re:It's science! (Score:5, Insightful)
Except climate change. That science is SETTLED !
Don't be misleading. The spectral absorption properties of CO2 are settled. The approximate amount of CO2 being emitted into the air by humans is settled. The measurable increase in CO2 concentration in the air is also settled. What that means for the future is certainly not settled. But only a handful of ignorant people really claim that anyway. So yes, "climate science" is technically still unsettled, but your implication that the impact humans made on the climate remains unsettled is deceptive.
Earth, derp! (Score:2)
We keep telling you that Earth isn't the center of the universe. This just proves it.
Re:Earth, derp! (Score:5, Interesting)
Which means that General Relativity is wrong, since General Relativity implies that ANY point can be taken as the center of the Universe, and you'll get the same results....
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It's as much at the centre as any other point.
Surprises are unsurpising (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that we're missing something important seems completely reasonable. The stretch of universe over which we are making measurements is vast. The level of detail is _poor_. and we extrapolate wildly from the limited detail to understand and to predict the observations for more and more of the array of the universal. It would be _shocking_ if there weren't surprises in the process.
It is interesting that there is a possibility of some system errors in our measurements, errors which when corrected avoid the need for extremely exotic forms of matter in our models. Given the consistency of matter that we have seen and do know about, that would be the way to bet.
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It is interesting that there is a possibility of some system errors in our measurements, errors which when corrected avoid the need for extremely exotic forms of matter in our models. Given the consistency of matter that we have seen and do know about, that would be the way to bet.
I'm not so sure. A lot of the hypothesized particles would have a density & distribution such that we would be unlikely to come across them on this tiny little speck of dust we call home. If you think about how comparatively long we've known about any fundamental particles at all, it should be obvious that we've likely only scratched the surface. The universe is 13 billion years old. We've been doing particle physics for something like 0.000000008 billion years. To be sure that we've discovered all form
Not a "crisis". An opportunity! (Score:2)
Of course some scientific "authorities" will see it as a crisis, since it may well invalidate their results. That makes them bad scientists though. The whole thing is pretty interesting and any good scientist will see it as an exciting opportunity, not as a problem.
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Dolphins?
Orcas?
Some of the modern dinosaurs?
Depending on what you count as "our level", of course. Hopefully you're not aiming for a narrow definition just so that we're the only thing that fits....
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Lawrence Krauss calls this situation a crisitunity -- a crisis to the current order, but ultimately an opportunity for badly needed understanding. He does this specifically to point out that researchers should run toward the fields in crisis, rather than away from them.
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I agree on that.
There is.... (Score:2)
Exotic physics (Score:2)
Explains a lot (Score:2)
One problem I've always had with this (Score:2)
Why does the expansion have to be constant throughout the entire universe?
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It doesn't. In fact, the Eternal Inflation model basically says that the observable universe is a patch that fell out of inflation somehow, but that it is embedded in a larger structure which continues to expand, and that there may be other patches which have similarly fallen out of inflation which could have different fundamental parameters. There are even testable hypotheses what to look for as evidence our bubble has bumped into some other bubble, but they rely on equipment we don't have yet. (Fortunatel
Related to a variable Fine Structure Constant? (Score:2)
Some observations seem to show a slight difference in the Fine Structure Constant, being slightly higher looking one direction and slightly lower in the opposite. (This would seem to imply that we should at least be looking for an expanding wave of change coming from a point.) But any variance would cause variable stars to behave in ways we're not familiar with in our own galaxy, so maybe we're misreading the distances to them because they're not pulsating at the expected rate for their mass. Finding a syst
inconstancy (Score:2)
One possible explanation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Either way... (Score:5, Informative)
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Mine was an example, though. If the article is true, it would have the same impact as saying that
Re: Either way... (Score:2)
So for us luddites, can you point out how it is wrong? A link will do.
Re: Either way... (Score:5, Funny)
I can't get it all in one post, but...take the inverse of the currently accepted value for "G", divide it by 16*Pi, and you get c, the speed of light. You're welcome.
That's numberwang!
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Re: Either way... (Score:3)
100% wrong? So it should be twice the value? (Score:2)
... of half?
The measurements on this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
deviate by less than 0.25% from each other, that's somewhat less than 100%.
Also for G*M_earth and G*M_sun we have much more precise values (up to 9 and 10 digits) due to measurements of g and celestial mechanics.
So maybe instead of vague, unsubstantiated claims that "big G is 100% wrong" maybe you should tell the world exactly what the correct value of "G" is (or the correct description of the gravitational force), how it came to be
Re:100% wrong? So it should be twice the value? (Score:4, Insightful)
What?
The 16*Pi nonsense where you strip the constants of their units and that only works in SI-units?
Where you wrote that "you can't fit it in one post, and then wrote one line?
And because the density of water is "1 unit" (maybe kg/l) "divide by 12"?
You played around with a few numbers, natural constants expressed in SI-units and mathematical constants, noticed some close match for a mathematical expression (not too difficult if you've got enough values to play with) and invented some nonsensical "explanation" that explains nothing.
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Does your carer know you're using the internet and haven't taken your meds today?
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Another 2 problems are that:
1. Newton's Law of universal attraction ignores the conventional speed of light limit,
2. The force is "magically" instantaneous regardless of distance.
Whoopsie!
Recall that the formula is:
F = G * m1 * m2 / r^2
F has units in N, which is kg * m / s^2 or kg * acceleration. (Distance is m/s^0, Velocity is m/s^1, Acceleration is m/s^2.) This is literally the second law of motion:
F = m * a
Notice how acceleration just magically ignores approaching the speed of light and is (allegedly) in
Re: Either way... (Score:2)
i still believe the "speed of light / time" thing is sat in the useful but unproven category.
cant transmit information using photons faster than a photon travels is one thing.
saying nothing can travel faster than a photon is something else entirely. especially when we know the speed of light is a variable depending on the medium it is travelling through.
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"c" is not the speed of light, but the speed of causality. Light happens to move that speed in a vacuum. All massless particles move at c in a vacuum. Gravity, too, moves at c, whether particles are involved in that or not.
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Who says nothing can travel faster than a photon? Special Relativity states that nothing can *accelerate* to the speed of light, but it's perfectly possible within current theory that something could spend its entire existence traveling faster than light. We even have a name for such hypothetical particles: tachyons.
The "information can't be transmitted faster than light" claim seems to me more more grounded in the implications of FTL combined with SR - if you can transmit information even slightly faste
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Well,
logically you are correct.
However in practice: the speed of light is defined as "how fast a photon travels in a vacuum". In practice this means: in every other medium said photons are slower.
Secondly: every thing that is not a photon is slower than the speed of light in the observable universe. The only "exception" are Neutrinos. (Note the quotes).
In this regard I find it more interesting that a photon _and_ a neutrino always moves, and always with their maximum speed. Everything else can be "at rest"
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Quite an interesting observation about how photons and neutrinos are only observed moving at their theoretical maximum speed and never stationary. I think you won the internet today on that one.
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My point is, that there is no explanation for low grade Physicists why photons only exist at the speed of light (and neutrinos are 'currently' not considered massless), if I ever got one told I actually forgot it. Do you know?
I think you won the internet today on that one. :P
Thank you nevertheless
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Any massless particle moves at the speed of light. Photons, gluons, and gravitons. Gravitons haven't been observed, but we have measured the speed of gravity, which is equal to the speed of light to reasonable confidence.
Any massive particle, including at least one of the neutrinos, moves slower than that. Neutrinos aren't any kind of exception. The reason you can't buy a box of neutrinos "at rest" on Amazon is that they don't respond to any forces we can muster in sufficient strength to build the box.
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No idea what you want to say.
What has the speed of light to do with Newtion physics?
F = m * a ... ... what else would it do? ...
YES: the acceleration happens instantly
No it dose not ignore the speed of light. It makes no claim about it or speed
You could say, that law is not aware of the limits the speed of light does impose. Perhaps that was what you wanted to say?
Re:Either way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for the issue that all of current science is percieved to be warped since Archimedes...all the way up to Einstein and beyond. At least for certain individuals that can't stand to do some critical thinking and rationally and logically percieve what those scientists are doing. The people doing actual science have clues as to what's wrong, so that's why they're happy scienceing, to try to discover some hidden truths. It's the impenetrable way science is done with its golden standards like falsification and reproducability. A way no other school of thought has, which makes anything else but science fundamentaly flawed and prone to dogmas. Articles like this merely point out that there is so much yet to understand about our universe. A look upon both the very big and very small is needed to tackle many problems that exist at the level of the solar system. It's frustrating to see so many fellow humans shun fundamental science, certainly if you know -everything- needed to be able to post here on slashdot wouldn't have been possible if we stopped doing fundamental research a few 100 years ago. Electricity, semiconductor theory and materials science, quantum theory resulting in the notions of stimulated emission of electromagnetic waves (lasers - no they didn't exist before Einstein posed his theories), the mathematics of fundamental computer science, the fundamental science behind many time saving gadgets and tools that make it possible for any individual in this day and age to have actual leisure time to 'discuss things on the 'net' instead of having to spend it, every day, to get enough nutrition to be capable of reproduction...
There, fixed it for you.
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Finally a genius explaining the universe (Score:2)
We have waited for you for 100 years now, to explain that "accounting mistake". So wonderful that you finally explain it to all of us. You must be a greater genius than Einstein, Feynman, Hawking, more or less all scientists of the 20st and 21st century combined. Where they spread darkness, you will bring the light.
One small detail though:
What exactly is that "accounting mistake" you are talking about, and how do we correct it?
Of course your correction will explain all those pesky inconsistencies we found,
Lol (Score:2)
The best minds already don't know the answer.
Understanding general relativity should be easy (Score:2)
... if what you say were true.
Only it isn't. It's still a quite difficult subject, and we've even made some progress in explaining it better.
Also playing around with a few constants and a calculator isn't smart.
But in the end it's not even relevant how smart you consider Einstein to be. It's the theory that counts, how good it worked, how well it predicted experimental results and stood the confrontation with reality.
So if you want to one up Einstein, then provide a theory that works better, explains gravit
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... if what you say were true.
Only it isn't. It's still a quite difficult subject, and we've even made some progress in explaining it better. Also playing around with a few constants and a calculator isn't smart.
But in the end it's not even relevant how smart you consider Einstein to be. It's the theory that counts, how good it worked, how well it predicted experimental results and stood the confrontation with reality.
So if you want to one up Einstein, then provide a theory that works better, explains gravity better, explains all the stuff that general relativity got right and some stuff that it got wrong (i.e. something that coherently combines general relativity *and* quantum mechanics). Of course you first need to understand the theories and their limitations.
Agreed. Part of the conceptual issues are all about the difficulties found in the human mind conceiving space/time and how it cannot be represented pictorially. Because we are a visual creature and the first view of a picture of a gravity well is two dimensional it is hard to visualize the third dimension and impossible to visualize the forth. Scales and graphs are not adequate for the task of teaching general relativity, it is far better to close ones eyes and conceive of time and space as a medium which c
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I think it's just that we don't deal with relativistic effects on a day to day basis. When someone throws a ball at you you have a good idea, not only of it's trajectory, and if and how to intercept it, but also of how hard it'll hit you. That's more than just pictures. That's because it's a common enough situation we developed an "intuition" for it.
But you also can develop intuition for other things, e.g. sailing a boat. At first you have to think about what you do, but pretty soon you'll get a "feel" for
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What does that theory explain better?
All the cause-effect chains we see are in one time direction, just the universe is headed in the opposite direction, how does that help? It just adds additional complication. A full sized universe "poof"ing into existence is even more to explain than a big bang, not least that it came into existence just so that it collapses neatly into a singularity. All the inconsistencies we observe in our universe, the stuff we "explain" with dark matter and dark energy, don't just g
Re: Finally a genius explaining the universe (Score:2)
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Then why the heck did you write a comment that is so ambiguous? If you had properly expressed your view as you do now, I'd never adjusted your comment in the first place.
The cherry on top was "The problems exist at the level of the solar system, and smaller.", suggesting to me, we should only look at the problems happening here on earth exclusively, suggesting a 'keep humanity on this tiny blue dot' mentality and aversion to explore... and that totally rubbed me the wrong way, which triggered me to write th
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(addition) If I've learned one thing today it's I've been exposed to so many examples of anti-science rhetoric lately it has distorted my way to objectively read another slashdotter's comments... that's... interesting.
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Simple: you publish it, get people to read and discuss it. But if you start by dismissing 100 years of physics based on your 16*Pi numerology and present excuses of the "dog ate my homework" kind it might be hard to convince someone you have any understanding what you're talking about.
Btw. it helps to have a firm understanding of the physical theory you're dealing with if you want to correct it.
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Re:Either way... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's frustrating.
And there's your problem.
You need to stop thinking that we can know everything now. We can't. We don't. There will be things that humanity will not know until long after you are dead and gone.
People like you are very, very uncomfortable with the phrase "I don't know." What you have to get over is the fact that in many cases, that's the right answer.
The only reliable way to go from "I don't know" to "I know" is science. But science moves in fits and starts. Science stagnates until the right genius comes along and puts the pieces together a little differently.
....so everyone goes about their happy scienceing, without a clue.
That's demonstrably false, as shown by this article, and if you actually understand science at all.
If all you rely on for your science knowledge are /. summaries of media summaries of media summaries of university summaries of published research, it's easy to get that feeling. But read the articles on the science behind the Hubble constant and you'll find that they carefully lay out the science, including error bars. They talk about the limitations, the approximations, the estimations. Turns out that scientists are actually very bright people, generally doing very good work.
When they know something, they'll tell you how well they know it, with statistical accuracy. They'll also tell you how they know it. And they will tell you if they don't know, as demonstrated in this article which made you so very uncomfortable.
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The only reliable way to go from "I don't know" to "I know" is science.
Good post over all, but you should say not "the only reliable way" but "the best way we know". There are some fundamental flaws, both philosophical and practical, with the scientific method. Much like democracy, and capitalism, it's the worst possible idea, except for everything else that's ever been tried.
Thing is, there's doubtless room to improve. There must be better methods. We won't find them by going back to shit from the past we know doesn't work as well, but we also won't find them by arrogantl
Re: Either way... (Score:2)
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When there is an article about some distant exo-planet being earth-like, being capable of sustaining life-forms different than on Earth or similar "science", you know that the uncertainty is so large that it is all meaningless wishful thinking. Get the basic physics right before start fantasizing.
Actually, either way it's rather meaningless. For some unknown reason, we get all excited about some discovered earth-like exo-planet that's "mere" light years away, without even considering the fact that we humans can measure our space travel in light seconds still, with no viable solutions for traveling at or near the speed of light. And a rounding error in physics isn't going to make an impact when discussing fantasy. We might as well be arguing about gravitational pull in a video game battling moon d
Re:Either way... (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot get the basic Physics right without speculating and then seeing what pans out and what does not. The problem here is mostly the press that has no clue how Science works and reports things that are hypotheses and potential models as facts.
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the press that has no clue how Science works and reports things that are hypotheses and potential models as facts.
The press is clueless, but this statement is hardly better. Science does not produce "facts". in the first place. Even the most well-accepted theories are not "facts". Science studies "facts", i.e. "observations" or "measurements", and produces models. Some models are very well established. Some are speculative. Some are well established, but everyone in the field hates them and wishes we had something better. But it's models all the way down.
Science does not produce "facts" or "prove things"; scienc
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Excuse me? Where did I claim that Science produces facts? Oh, right, I did not.
Science makes claims with different confidence levels and predictive power. What I said is that the press now even claims absolute confidence ("fact") for things that are on low confidence level.
Incidentally, science does prove things, just with confidence levels below absolute. What it proves is applicability or non-applicability of models. Especially the latter can have proofs with exceptionally high confidence. One exception:
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Indeed. And always make sure to find out what kind of agenda your sources have.
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when you find a bug you must smile
Not if you're an user affected by it.
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It is like software, when you find a bug you must smile, you are about to learn something and make your product more true and thereby more good,
... and then it turns out there is a space instead of a tab in your makefile, and you were inadvertently linking with a stale object file.
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There are bugs at different scales. Often a bug can be patched with local change in code. Less often a more expensive fix is needed. Sometimes you're patching stuff but become increasingly aware that to get things right you need a major rewrite of a functionality. The question asked here is whether we have something similar to that last category
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We just need AI to help us figure stuff out.
If we "need" AI, then we are doomed. There is no AI. There will not be any AI anytime soon. There may never be AI that deserves the name.
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Okay, I'll bite - how do you know that?
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Okay, I'll bite - how do you know that?
Absolutely no indicators that intelligence (in the human sense, so I am talking about AGI here, obviously) can be implemented artificially. I have been following the field for 30 years now and they have noting. What gets called "AI" these days is about as smart as a piece of paper, i.e. not at all and it is all basically old tech that just got massively larger hardware to run on. At this time, there is not even a credible theory how to go beyond that. With all the effort invested, we should at least have so
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"Absolutely no indicators that intelligence (in the human sense, so I am talking about AGI here, obviously) can be implemented artificially."
That does revolve around your definition of "artificially". We assume that we are intelligent in the way we define it for the question, and we are physical, and we have no evidence that there is anything non deterministic about us, therefor it seems reasonable that its possible to assume that intelligence is achievable by a machine because we are a machine and we have
Re:This is very exciting news. (Score:5, Insightful)
Penrose might have argued that we are not deterministic (he might not today, his hypothesis hasn't held up well) but that still isn't an argument supporting the impossibility of an artificial mind. Our current technology makes use of non-deterministic quantum effects all the time.
As you point out, we have at least one example of a human-level intelligence. The only arguments against the possibility of producing them artificially are mystical: my brain is magic; you can't create souls; the mind is not generated by the brain, but exists in a parallel dimension and is accessed through the pineal gland.
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The point you are making about why AI will never be achieved is an argument from ignorance. Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence.
Clearly the universe contains conditions sufficient for intelligence to exist at all, but we know of no particular limiting factor which suggests that intelligence cannot be implemented artificially.
Barring some physical law which suggests why we could not ever implement general AI, or at least knowing precisely what physical laws which cannot eve
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Rofl ...
If you followed the subject since 30 years, then you would not write nonsense like this: With all the effort invested, we should at least have something on the distant horizon, or some glimmer of actual intelligence already implemented
No one is working on "human like artificial intelligence" yet alone "self aware". In German loosely translated AI in universities is not called AI, it is called "cognitive systems".
All the research goes in agents, neuronal networks, fuzzy logic, furrier analysis, pictu
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And when any of those hypotheses fits the data closer (not perfectly, because no theory would even be perfect) than the existing model, they can be considered.
Every alternative has glaring holes in certain circumstances where it just doesn't fit observation at all, whatsoever, in any way. You can't just brush over it and pretend that it works differently and thus we shouldn't use that hypothesis when measuring "X"... that's just the same situation as we have now (i.e. quantum physics is different to Newton
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I believe that general relatively is well tested and shown to be reliable, but there is a chance that it may not be "all there is" and there may be additional physics that operate in parallel or additional edge cases. There is evidence to support many mainstream theories does this mean that they are 100% complete, of course not. When we find new things, it does not necessarily mean they are all wrong, but it does mean that there are holes to fill in and maybe some additional physical theories to be found. M
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Leave it to humans to define what the universe "ought" to do. We humans do not know how long we have existed on this planet with any resenblance to accuracy and yet we will define the age of the universe with that same level of accuracy. And when the results do not add up, we confabulate to explain why the universe doesn't play along. Maybe when we have 10,000 years of data, then, maybe we will start to understand what is going on.
I'm sorry, but that's some weird defeatist stuff. I think you mean well, but I can't agree.
Every time you catch a baseball, you've defined what the universe "ought" to do. You've made observations throughout your life regarding how gravity and physics work and you've predicted the path of what an object that is not part of you should do, and you have sufficient confidence in that prediction that you put you hand in its path and catch the ball. This is the same thing, on a more difficult scale.
The con
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Why wouldn't it be constant?
Dark matter is not a consistent theory. It doesn't even explain what it's supposed to be. File it under "Mass we haven't found YET" and there's no reason why it should do anything spooky.