underscored — Underscored

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Tag:paradigm-shiftClear

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
— Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (1949)

2w ago

The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

2w ago

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforting stability of accepted doctrine and the terrible freedom of intellectual adventure.

1mo ago

readtrung.com

Sabastian Sawe, Adidas and the Sub-2 Hour Marathon

To understand the significance of someone running a marathon in less than two hours, you also need to understand that, until recently, the notion of this actually happening was truly, utterly absurd.

1mo ago

dwarkesh.com

Terence Tao – Kepler, Newton, and the true nature of mathematical discovery

But the story of how we discovered the shape of our solar system shows how the verification loop for correct ideas can be decades (or even millennia) long. During this time, what we know today as the better theory can often actually make worse predictions (Copernicus's model of circular orbits around the sun was actually less accurate than Ptolemy's geocentric model).

2mo ago

dwarkesh.com

Terence Tao – Kepler, Newton, and the true nature of mathematical discovery

During this time, what we know today as the better theory can often actually make worse predictions (Copernicus's model of circular orbits around the sun was actually less accurate than Ptolemy's geocentric model). And the reasons it survives this epistemic hell is some mixture of judgment and heuristics that we don't even understand well enough to actually articulate, much less codify into an RL loop.

2mo ago

The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons.

2mo ago

The best ideas have a lifespan. At first, they're attacked viciously. Then they're accepted as obvious. The violence of the attacks is proportional to how good the idea is.

3mo ago

The discoverer of a new scientific truth does not gradually win over his opponents by converting them... What does happen is that his opponents gradually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with the idea from the beginning.

3mo ago

Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.

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