Gotta add the time factor. “Billions of years ago”
Isn’t that even more interesting?
Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
111–120 of 189 posts
Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tech's general atheism has left many tech people with a somewhat compromised ideological immune system It seems wrong to blame atheism for this. Somehow I doubt that devotion to a more traditional "Sky Daddy" would make people any less likely to play around with thought experiments about AI or simulations and the idea that religion has some kind of inoculating effect against magical thinking seems ridiculous. Peopl…
He's implying causality the other way. A desire to not want to die paired with a desire to avoid traditional religion leads people to indulge ideas and concepts they would otherwise dismiss as nonsense - singularity, simulation, medical immortality, and so on. We want religion, but we don't want it to be called religion. I'm not just mocking others either. I'm quite compelled by the simulation hypothesis, but have th…
Yep, if a civilization doesn't destroy itself it creates everything it wants. Some don't want simulations, so let it be for them. Some want, they can have it, too. Only you yourself will decide. It's a thought experiment to maximize non-enforcement of things on each other, maximize freedoms. By definition it's highly speculative. But don't die please, if we are in fact in the multiversal simulation, death doesn't lead you there or to some utopia.
It'll just be unfair for death to lead to something good, it's not freedom if before or after death, you'll have this thought: "ha-ha, you just needed to die, stupid!" Nope, you can recall your "multiversal powers" as a quiet thought as baby or at any moment of your life, possibly even live some time as a ghost (if you chose it beforehand), it can be fun to be a ghost for some time for some.
You'll still be alive and will be able to recall and forget as little or as much as you want. Or the whole thing. You don't die, you can stay and you can go at the same time (by basically choosing to make a clone of yourself who is as free as you. Who can pursue multiversal exploration, while you yourself stay and probably choose to forget about your multiversal powers again). It's counterintuitive and hard to explain, basically everything is possible but there are some things that happen more often because they cause less unfreedom.
Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
#113I'm always fascinated by the posters here who insist on second-guessing the writers and the scientists who spend their whole lives studying a topic like this. No one needs to read your post fessing up to your profound ignorance and the fact that you didn't really read the link.
I'm probably guilty of making comments that read this way at times, but it's almost always out of curiosity and a dash of invoking Cunningham's law.
Lately I've started feeding my questions into LLMs to explore these ideas. Given that I will almost certainly never make a decision where an improper understanding of astrophysics is at fault, I'm willing to run the risk of hallucinations leading me to improper conclusions. :)
For the morbidly curious: https://chatgpt.com/share/67dc94a3-07c8-800c-bdbf-039dd2ce50...
(It's funny, I've seen people say that they generally don't even bother with spell checking questions to LLMs because it doesn't seem to make any difference. I was tempted to rerun this before posting to fix the disorganized thoughts in my questions, but I ain't got time for that.)
Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might read the guidelines, much older than five years, about saying HN has changed, and also saying it's more like reddit.
I don't think I've ever been on a forum that doesn't have comments to that effect regularly. "It was better a few years ago, it's all going to hell now, we're becoming Reddit/4Chan/Slashdot" It's the internet forum version of "the youth has gotten lazy, it weren't like this when I were a lad"
I was on usenet in 1995 but I have heard that was too late and usenet already sucked then.
In all fairness too, my 17 year old self who knew basically nothing about the world ,really did add absolutely nothing of value to the usenet discussions I participated in besides noise. Of course, at the time I thought the complete opposite.
The thing that amuses me most is at the time there would have been a lot of "pro communism" in my responses on anything society related even though I knew absolutely nothing about communism and even less about economics as a whole.
I think this is just the way semi-anon discussions with big age and generation gaps go.
Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
#115I'm always fascinated by the posters here who insist on second-guessing the writers and the scientists who spend their whole lives studying a topic like this. No one needs to read your post fessing up to your profound ignorance and the fact that you didn't really read the link.
Science cannot be trusted anymore. Journals don't validate anything they submit. Departments are rewarded by how much money they wring out of the government, not by whether what they say is true. Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong. Also you don't sound "fascinated", so if you're complaining at least be honest about it. There are many more descriptive words than "fascinated".
> Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong.
Isn't that what's they're supposed to do? "Hey we found this thing, here's how we did it." Next week: "Yeah I checked your data and got different results, let's figure out what's different." A few months/years later: "We've figured out where the problems were and now have a better understanding of this."
Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
#116I'm always fascinated by the posters here who insist on second-guessing the writers and the scientists who spend their whole lives studying a topic like this. No one needs to read your post fessing up to your profound ignorance and the fact that you didn't really read the link.
I'm probably guilty of making comments that read this way at times, but it's almost always out of curiosity and a dash of invoking Cunningham's law. Lately I've started feeding my questions into LLMs to explore these ideas. Given that I will almost certainly never make a decision where an improper understanding of astrophysics is at fault, I'm willing to run the risk of hallucinations leading me to improper conclusio…
I love this chat. This is exactly the kind of chat I’ve had with ChatGPT about things like Native American reservations, their history, etc.
Stuff like this is what I love most about these LLMs.
As someone who minored in astronomy and especially loved stuff about stellar life cycles, I didn’t see any red flags in what you were told.
Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
We expected heavy elements from supernova. It’s surprising that there is 10x more heavy elements than expected. Were there more supernova? Bigger ones? Are we missing other pieces of the picture?
Is a single order of magnitude within a reasonable range of error for the calculation? Some cases that is a massive miss, but other cases that might be within the expected statistical range. In the former cases it implies something entirely missing, while the latter cases are more likely to be known uncertainties which can now be better refined.
An order of magnitude is nothing if you know anything about how astronomers do their calculations xD
Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scientists have to publish a lot of papers (even useless ones) because that is how we have decided to rate them, for better or worse. And yes, they all mostly need to fish for funding to keep their not-so-well paid jobs going. They are hardly "ordained priests" though. I think you are trying to insult them, but not really sure what you even mean. They are pretty much by definition highly intelligent people who could…
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Claims to know..
Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm probably guilty of making comments that read this way at times, but it's almost always out of curiosity and a dash of invoking Cunningham's law. Lately I've started feeding my questions into LLMs to explore these ideas. Given that I will almost certainly never make a decision where an improper understanding of astrophysics is at fault, I'm willing to run the risk of hallucinations leading me to improper conclusio…
I love this chat. This is exactly the kind of chat I’ve had with ChatGPT about things like Native American reservations, their history, etc. Stuff like this is what I love most about these LLMs. As someone who minored in astronomy and especially loved stuff about stellar life cycles, I didn’t see any red flags in what you were told.
Nice! It's like having a patient neighbor that knows a lot about some topic but, you know, don't bet your life on it being accurate haha.
Thanks!!!
Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
#120I would be shocked if it were not found everywhere.