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realityfactchexyesterday at 9:15 PM2 repliesview on HN

> article presumes ... everything could still be subject to a major paradigm shift. ...seems pretty unlikely

Alternatively: there's plenty of mainstream, accepted science that's plain, flat out, provably wrong. Yet, it is against good taste (job security, people's feelings, status quo bias, etc.) to point this out.

Hence, it can actually be tricky to catch wind of, or get a grasp on, such issues to begin with, much less pursue such issues toward meaningful, published, recognized change in understanding (that is to say: paradigm shift).

I'd name some examples, but you wouldn't believe me.

With respect to the article, it seems the current LLMs can (though, obviously, do not necessarily have to) return text that appears to reason (pretty reasonably!) about paradigm shifts, when given the context required and nudged quite forcefully toward particular directions. But, as the article seems to indicate, the LLMs seem to not tend toward finding, investigating, and reporting on paradigm shifts all on their own very much. (But maybe part of that is intrinsic to how they are programmed and/or their context?)


Replies

cogman10yesterday at 9:27 PM

> there's plenty of mainstream, accepted science that's plain, flat out, provably wrong. Yet, it is against good taste (read: job security, people's feelings, etc.) to point this out.

I highly doubt that.

There are a lot of people that think they've proving the mainstream wrong. But more often than not, it's cranks using bad non-repeated tests. These bad tests are propped up, ironically, because of people's feelings and job security more than a built up body of evidence.

They also almost always have to ignore the mainstream body of evidence and just say it's wrong and bad because of a conspiracy.

For example, plenty of creationists believe they have irrefutable evidence that evolution is provably wrong. It's usually a few cherry picked or poorly interpreted results or sometimes just flat out lying. And often they simply flat out lie about the existing body of evidence that support evolution.

Another example is the antivaxx movement. Wakefield and RFK both built careers that made them a lot of money talking about how the mainstream was wrong. Even when the industry adopted some of the recommendations (abandoning Thimerosal), they simply ignored the fact that further data didn't support their claims.

worikyesterday at 9:45 PM

> ... there's plenty of mainstream, accepted science that's plain, flat out, provably wrong : : > I'd name some examples, but you wouldn't believe me.

I probably would not. You would probably be wrong