Michael Nielsen – How science actually progresses
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Aesthetic consistency drives science beyond experimental data
“Einstein (who claimed that he hadn't even heard of the famous Michaelson Morely experiment which is supposed to have motivated special relativity until after he had come up with it)”
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Scientific verification loops can span two millennia
“The first successful measurement of stellar parallax was in 1838. That's a 2,000-year verification loop.”
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Socio-cultural barriers delayed Darwin's obvious insights
“Why did it take till 1859 to lay out an idea whose essence every farmer since antiquity must have observed?”
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Alien civilizations likely utilize divergent technology stacks
“Aliens will likely have a VERY different science + tech stack that us.”
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Intuition allows progress despite ambiguous experimental results
“Clearly human science is able to make progress faster than raw experimental falsification/verification would imply, and in cases where experiments are very ambiguous.”