Reading this, my immediate thought is that learning good epistemics (so that you can understand what is good research and what isn't) is a difficult skill that requires commitment and effort. And people who don't already have a good grasp on it will have a hard time realizing it.
BUT we have a social mechanism to solve for this called school. Young people, who we invest in. And a simple prerequisite is to have highschool and college classes simply being about reviewing scientific articles and figuring out if they are trustworthy or not and why.
Reading through 5-6 science papers hyper critically and developing a taste for what is good and bad science does not feel like something that is above %50 of college graduates. and that would be a game changer.
It is very hard for even well trained scientists to discern from good or bad science, and just corrupted science. The problem with journals and papers are that they are fully corrupted. Ghislaine Maxwell's father invented journals. You know, Jeffery Epstein's handler's father. A fully corrupted system can be countered with independent replication.
Because your focus is on being able to read scientific papers, but we think it should be on recreating experiments independently. Science journals are not required for science. Einstein, James Maxwell, etc have had no papers plublished in journals, yet their thories are recreated billions of times per day - for example when we use cell phones.
Thank you for your very logical look at decision making. It reminded me of something I learned about Einstein, he always reevaluated a scientific hypothesis several times in the desire to really make a decision on what was the undeniable truth.
When he discovered the final equation that was the absolute true answer it seemed to scream out in his brain and sensibilities. We must trust our instincts in finding our truths.
Yes!!! This reminded me that, I've been trying to decide what the topic should be of the next "Our Story So Far" post, and I think it's going to be about "the truth of feeling" referencing that Ted Chiang story, but also the many people who have come to this same conclusion: that our gut feelings, the things that resonate, the things that spark joy & curiosity, *are* pointing us to truth. And that over & over again in big scientific breakthroughs we see this pattern, of intuition driving it.
Thanks for your response to my comment. I do enjoy reading your Substack and the comments from the readers.
Just a quick note about another Substack writer I enjoy is Slick <heyslick@substack.com> . The latest article was about "Nick Land and the Cult of Acceleration".
Your article and this article brought me back to my college days, specifically Logic and Philosophy. Our brains have been researched to the degree that the circuitry of our brain has become in so many ways the definition of our actions. I just wonder if we’re so programmed that something like AI is going to or has overtaken our instincts and abilities to find our truths?
do you mean like, is it possible that these systems may know us better than we know ourselves?
If so, I have a lot to say, but the short version is: even if that is true, it's bottlenecked by our ability to recognize it. A system may tell us truth, but if we fail to understand it, and act on that misunderstanding, that's us being misled.
Like, we still have to do the work to understand & grow even if advanced superintelligence exists. But (1) I don't actually think that's here yet, nor are we necessarily on the cusp of it. I think Gary Marcus may be right about LLMs (2) it matters not just what is true but what we desire. We have agency in what *becomes* true as we interact with the world.
What you say is still being lived as we look towards the future. Although, I have to question why then did SCOTUS, the realm of elite legal minds where We The People look towards for final decisions on a variety of issues. Why did the majority make the decision they did today on deportation and civil rights? It lacks intelligence, humanity, empathy, compassion, and justice. What altered their knowledge of historical precedent and sensibilities?
How many papers did Einstein have published? James Maxwell? Yet their theories are recreated every day. Replication is better science than journal citation.
This is excellent, and fits into a broader move away from centralised authority and institutionally approved 'truth' and towards something more dynamic, robust, inclusive and fruitful.
Did you know Ghislaine Mawell's father, Robert, was the person responsible for centralizing science into journals? Not fishy at all. Jeffery Epstein's handler's father. Think about that. And look him up.
But science isn't the only system we fix by decentralization. We can fix them all.
How? We must build what Tim Urban calls "genies" in hs book "What's Our Problem?"
This is the area of science that we believe can save humanity, and virtually no one is here studying it yet:
COLLECTIVE SWARM INTELLIGENCE IN HUMANS - and how to extract the wisdom of crowds safely:
Reading this, my immediate thought is that learning good epistemics (so that you can understand what is good research and what isn't) is a difficult skill that requires commitment and effort. And people who don't already have a good grasp on it will have a hard time realizing it.
BUT we have a social mechanism to solve for this called school. Young people, who we invest in. And a simple prerequisite is to have highschool and college classes simply being about reviewing scientific articles and figuring out if they are trustworthy or not and why.
Reading through 5-6 science papers hyper critically and developing a taste for what is good and bad science does not feel like something that is above %50 of college graduates. and that would be a game changer.
Science should be based on replication, not on citation
It is very hard for even well trained scientists to discern from good or bad science, and just corrupted science. The problem with journals and papers are that they are fully corrupted. Ghislaine Maxwell's father invented journals. You know, Jeffery Epstein's handler's father. A fully corrupted system can be countered with independent replication.
can you explain how that relates to my message? I don't understand
Because your focus is on being able to read scientific papers, but we think it should be on recreating experiments independently. Science journals are not required for science. Einstein, James Maxwell, etc have had no papers plublished in journals, yet their thories are recreated billions of times per day - for example when we use cell phones.
Thank you for your very logical look at decision making. It reminded me of something I learned about Einstein, he always reevaluated a scientific hypothesis several times in the desire to really make a decision on what was the undeniable truth.
When he discovered the final equation that was the absolute true answer it seemed to scream out in his brain and sensibilities. We must trust our instincts in finding our truths.
Yes!!! This reminded me that, I've been trying to decide what the topic should be of the next "Our Story So Far" post, and I think it's going to be about "the truth of feeling" referencing that Ted Chiang story, but also the many people who have come to this same conclusion: that our gut feelings, the things that resonate, the things that spark joy & curiosity, *are* pointing us to truth. And that over & over again in big scientific breakthroughs we see this pattern, of intuition driving it.
Thank you for this comment!
Thanks for your response to my comment. I do enjoy reading your Substack and the comments from the readers.
Just a quick note about another Substack writer I enjoy is Slick <heyslick@substack.com> . The latest article was about "Nick Land and the Cult of Acceleration".
Your article and this article brought me back to my college days, specifically Logic and Philosophy. Our brains have been researched to the degree that the circuitry of our brain has become in so many ways the definition of our actions. I just wonder if we’re so programmed that something like AI is going to or has overtaken our instincts and abilities to find our truths?
do you mean like, is it possible that these systems may know us better than we know ourselves?
If so, I have a lot to say, but the short version is: even if that is true, it's bottlenecked by our ability to recognize it. A system may tell us truth, but if we fail to understand it, and act on that misunderstanding, that's us being misled.
Like, we still have to do the work to understand & grow even if advanced superintelligence exists. But (1) I don't actually think that's here yet, nor are we necessarily on the cusp of it. I think Gary Marcus may be right about LLMs (2) it matters not just what is true but what we desire. We have agency in what *becomes* true as we interact with the world.
What you say is still being lived as we look towards the future. Although, I have to question why then did SCOTUS, the realm of elite legal minds where We The People look towards for final decisions on a variety of issues. Why did the majority make the decision they did today on deportation and civil rights? It lacks intelligence, humanity, empathy, compassion, and justice. What altered their knowledge of historical precedent and sensibilities?
How many papers did Einstein have published? James Maxwell? Yet their theories are recreated every day. Replication is better science than journal citation.
This is excellent, and fits into a broader move away from centralised authority and institutionally approved 'truth' and towards something more dynamic, robust, inclusive and fruitful.
Decentralize all systems!
Yes exactly! We wrote about this several times such as here - DECENTRALIZE SCIENCE!:
https://joshketry.substack.com/p/decnetralize-science-how-ghislaine?utm_source=publication-search
Did you know Ghislaine Mawell's father, Robert, was the person responsible for centralizing science into journals? Not fishy at all. Jeffery Epstein's handler's father. Think about that. And look him up.
But science isn't the only system we fix by decentralization. We can fix them all.
How? We must build what Tim Urban calls "genies" in hs book "What's Our Problem?"
This is the area of science that we believe can save humanity, and virtually no one is here studying it yet:
COLLECTIVE SWARM INTELLIGENCE IN HUMANS - and how to extract the wisdom of crowds safely:
https://growthmindsetmatters.substack.com/p/the-way-to-save-humanity-from-golems