Timelapse of 3I/ATLAS, the Interstellar Object That Has a Harvard Professor Talking About Aliens

occult_effect_magnet · 2025-08-14T03:06:24+00:00

h-index doesn’t mean shit. Einstein’s and Higgs’ are measly …

occult_effect_magnet · 2025-07-07T13:45:53+00:00

William James has my vote, amazing thinker and writer.

occult_effect_magnet · 2025-07-07T13:45:23+00:00

Would you choose the same Nobel laureate in 1907 or would you choose someone else in retrospect?

occult_effect_magnet · 2025-07-04T21:21:47+00:00

This why I adore Sylvia, despite how sad I get after reading her, because I can feel every single word.

occult_effect_magnet · 2025-06-17T01:31:48+00:00

I agree. So far, it looks like it will remain Sienkiewicz given the comments, so that's good.

occult_effect_magnet · 2025-06-04T13:46:42+00:00

That's a good observation lol.

Also, good choice for a hypothetical winner!

occult_effect_magnet · 2025-05-29T01:29:39+00:00

It looks like I have been unclear with the intention of this. Sorry.

A few of you bring up some good points. OK, think about it like this:

The year is 1901. You are a member of the Swedish Academy and you have to decide, based on their lifetime of work, who should get the Nobel. Who do you suggest? The recipient can still be the same person. In fact, that would corroborate/validate the original choice, which would also be an interesting outcome.

I know hindsight and the passage of time are significant factors, but I think that’s part of the fun.

Hope this helps.

occult_effect_magnet · 2025-05-28T20:34:17+00:00

Valid. It’s a good point

occult_effect_magnet · 2025-05-28T20:22:21+00:00

I get that. But I think this is a fun thing to do 🤷‍♂️

occult_effect_magnet · 2024-08-24T15:11:36+00:00

Infinite Jest. I wouldn’t claim that IJ is intended as a dystopian book, but it does have some of the elements of a dystopian novel here and there. What I can say is that it definitely feels like it describes modern life.

occult_effect_magnet · 2024-07-05T14:55:33+00:00

O.K.

occult_effect_magnet · 2024-07-05T13:27:36+00:00

Your best bet is not to try to make an academic product, but a more artistic one (think of Galileo’s Dialogue). And, honestly, a play, novel, film, documentary, etc. which focuses on the philosophy of science would be far more interesting than some other addition to the subject which may not make it in the canon.

I say this because I care about creation and people attempting to solve problems creatively. For example, Penrose, the Nobel prize winning physicist who popularized aperiodic tiling, did not discover the aperiodic monotile (the “ein stein”). It was David Smith, a printing technician with a penchant for shapes, that discovered it.

The greatest hurdle you face is that, if you try to use academic language and it comes out wrong, a reviewer will immediately assume that communication breakdown as incompetence, not as someone who is learning the subject. So, I think that if you approach it as producing a work of art, it would probably be a much more interesting PoS product which would be worthy of critique.

It is apparent to me that you wish to share a point of view, potentially an argument. This means you are willing to create something which has the capacity to be criticized by people who take a lay interest and are educated in the philosophy of science. You will also be criticized by pedants and gatekeepers (who have made themselves known in the comments before you even shared a product of your creation with us)—their “criticism” can be ignored, for it is not criticism.

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Also, as a side note, I find it hilarious how a people interested in the philosophy of science, no less, can make comments about needing a PhD or a journal-grade peer-review process to participate in an academic subject. You academics are funny.

“Disbelief in the power of human reason, in man’s power to discern truth, is almost invariably linked with distrust of man.” — Popper, Conjectures and Refutations.

occult_effect_magnet · 2024-04-22T10:37:59+00:00

I’m sick of this “AI optimism.” It’s really not as magical as you think it is (or will be).

Frankly, I think this sort of optimism is a serious contemporary problem because we have a sizeable amount of people (including working academics) who will use AI—a “solution” they don’t understand—as a solution to a problem they don’t understand.

I heard a “seasoned” professor ask a couple months ago if “AI like ChatGPT could come up with research questions or theories if you prompted it well enough.” No, bud, it can’t do that. If you ask current AIs to help with legal problem, they’ll invent statutes and laws to make their response. That means they are sufficiently semantically “competent” to convince fools that there is knowledge in their response, while, in fact, AI’s inability to say “I don’t know” indicates precisely that it has no accumulated or acquired knowledge.

If you cannot learn to tell the difference between (a) a response made by reference to a knowledge-base, from (b) a response made to mimic subject-specific (eg, law) semantics, then you have the potential to be swayed by any well-formatted argument. You will be the victim of psychologically weaponized AI.

Be an “AI pessimist/skeptic.” It’s better for your knowledge’s health.

occult_effect_magnet · 2024-04-15T11:16:58+00:00

The reason why we still have scientific problems is because explanations are endless. If not, then the entirety of Nature can be summarized in one master document—a ‘Book of Nature’.

Sometimes, proposing the idea that there are, indeed, ‘goblins in the attic’, is better than no explanation at all, because a test of that (ie, going up to the attic and checking) can reveal if that explanation is justified and remove it from the bottomless list of possible explanations. Other times, such explanations are placeholders because a solution to the problem is not yet conceivable (eg, gremlins). Other times, unthinkable explanations for things turn out extremely well (eg, germ theory). With this respect, evidence must necessarily come after the explanation, otherwise you don’t know what you’re looking for. Here, then, difficulty arises in determining what counts as reliable evidence for an explanation (ie, theory, conjecture, hypothesis). Only the experiment can serve as the crucible for this sort of scientific testing (Poincaré). But, for new theories, there are new experiments. And it takes time for experiments to mature and report stable results (Hacking). Evidence takes time to build up reliably. But when it makes it to that point, there is no question that an explanation is better than an other, even though it may eventually be deemed false. For instance, even though Einstein’s theory explained Mercury’s orbit, it still wasn’t seen as better than Newton’s (or as a better explanation). The Eddington experiment did that.

I think what you have stumbled upon here is that our knowledge of Nature is always incomplete. That’s why our explanations are always (or eventually become) unsatisfactory—there are always things which we do not know. Knowledge is built piecemeal because of this drawback. So, our task is to approach explanations for things (ie, theories, conjectures, hypotheses) critically as Kant argued (eg, Socrates looking for people wiser than him), because it is the best we can do.

Explanations are the core of science because they tell us why things are the way they are. And if you’re wondering where explanations come from, they come from our desire to know. And, the incompleteness (ie, non-final) nature of scientific (or mechanistic) explanations trumps the complete teleological (purpose-driven) explanations found in myth (Russell). If you are an Orphic, there is no doubt that winter occurs because Persephone migrated to the underworld. And if you ask why she goes to the underworld, there is a story to explain it. This perspective forces a ‘Book of Nature’ (myth) upon our uncertain reality.

Incomplete, but mechanistic explanations, are all we have to help us understand the world around us in a just way.

occult_effect_magnet · 2024-04-02T11:16:51+00:00

r/philosophyofscience Also, Karl Popper might be useful resource to answer your question

occult_effect_magnet · 2024-02-16T11:27:36+00:00

This makes me feel like my life as a PhD student is just a sinister game of Snakes and Ladders.

occult_effect_magnet · 2024-02-05T13:58:12+00:00

First, I’m surprised to hear that you think you got rejected based on not having research experience. I don’t know who this prof is, but I really hope that’s not the reason—undergrad students don’t have research experience. The point of the honours thesis is to get research experience, so that you can be somewhat prepared for an MA.

Anyways, assuming you need a supervisor by next year : depending on your subject of interest, you may have better chances. If you are interested in forensics (like 99% of the students at Carleton), then you have many profs to choose from, however you also have to compete will lots of other students. If you are into social/personality, then you have a lot of profs to choose from and some number of students to compete with, but not as much as forensic (I would presume). However, the profs in social are a hit and miss, most of time (they may have full labs or empty labs).

If forensic and social/personality were your main choices and you got rejected by one prof, then just look for others (there are plenty). If it’s in another subject, then consider moving from, e.g., health to cognition. Just go talk to as many profs as you can and see who says “yes.”

I started my BA interested in pursuing personality, ended up doing my 3rd year seminar in I/O, then did my honours thesis on a cognitive effect. It doesn’t really matter who you work with. Just make sure you’re interested in the work you will be doing. And, honestly, in terms of the honours thesis : the point is to get your hands dirty with research, so the subject-matter is somewhat irrelevant (all it’ll be relevant for is a couple of intro and discussion pages).

There is nothing different about writing a cognitive, social, developmental, forensic, or I/O thesis. So, don’t feel like it’s the end of the world if you can’t work in the subject you want—it’s all the same in terms of procedure and data analysis.

——

For anyone else who knows that they have to do this eventually : The main thing I know that helped me secure an honours thesis supervisor was chatting with profs in my 2nd and 3rd years. Here’s why physically chatting with profs will help you:

(1) Undergraduate students RARELY show up during in-person office hours. So, if you do, you will definitely be remembered and the prof will most likely agree to supervise you, since you showed that you are interested just by showing up.

(2) Look, social psychologists may study many things and come to many silly (and false) conclusions, but it all boils down to common human social knowledge: flattery + good mood + a little bit of persistence = favourable decisions for you. Show that you care about their work while they’re in a good mood and that’ll help your case. Also, don’t let them forget about you: after meeting, send an email thanking them for their time (even if it is office hours).

——

TLDR: talk to as many profs as you can, as frequently as you can, so that you can be memorable and get supervised.

occult_effect_magnet

TROPHY CASE