dventimi

It'll pay for itself!

You can buy kits!

http://www.dinermite.com/photos.html

No. I'm stating a fact. You're free to state other facts if you like.

That was a typo from a phone keyboard.

Maybe I shouldn't. Something fishy may not be going on in it, and that would become a waste of time.

I create a lot of applications with AI. I don't inspect any of the cod.

Sure. I'm with you. I'm just puzzled by the article.

"Cost" is a matter of personal judgement. Personally, using AI hasn't cost me anything.

I don't have a contract with AI.

I'll take that as a "no".

Can you be more precise?

So...software engineers become product managers? All of us? That's going to be an awful lot of product managers.

So...what does it cost you?

But that's not to say that they wouldn't be capable of adding safeguards on their end, not even on their MCP layer. Adding policies and narrowing access to whatever comes through MCP to the server and so on would be more assuring measures than what their comment here suggest around more prompting.

This is certainly prudent advice, and why I found the GA example support application to be a bit simplistic. I think a more realistic database application in Supabase or on any other platform would take advantage of multiple roles, privileges, Row Level Security, and other affordances within the database to provide invariants and security guarantees.

I don't consider cosmic inflation to be an observation. I consider it theory.

Suit yourself

Rubbish

"I think that's pretty uncalled for."

I don't share your thoughts on the passage you're specifically referring to. It seems pretty anodyne to me.

"I think it's pretty uncalled for to lump them in with "flat or hollow earth, antivax and HIV deniers, homeopaths"

I don't share that view, either, but I also don't think they were lumping things together. They were giving examples to answer a specific question I had asked.

"From my perspective they're engaging in a theoretical pursuit and you're just taking a dump on them."

You're entitled to your perspective, just as I'm entitled to my perspective that yours is overblown.

"Are you ignoring them?"

Like many things, that's a matter of degree. I'm mostly ignoring, though not so much that I won't occasionally engage the subject on HN.

"I also don't feel the need to demonize them."

I'm not aware of anyone here who's doing that

"Couldn't you just say, "Interesting concept. I doubt it works out for cosmic background radiation, but would make for a cool Star Trek episode". Or just say nothing?"

I could, but I won't, because I don't consider MOND and MOG to be interesting concepts. Why do you want me to say that I do?

"Why do you have to accuse them of being small-minded, simplistic thinkers who are really just motivated by being too dumb to understand the current meta and not unlike harmful idiots that earnestly believe space is just government propaganda and viruses aren't real?"

I'm not.

"I don't think we were talking about what people should be penalized for by the government."

We're not talking about that at all. That's a non-sequitur. I was just emphasizing that what people can do and still be considered reasonable is a matter of personal judgement. It's a matter of personal judgement if I want to scorn the MOND and MOG people. I don't, but I could if I wanted to.

I DON'T scorn them, but I do largely ignore them. I'm ignoring them even now.

"problematic" is a matter of degree, and is relative. Inflation is less problematic than some theories (e.g. "magic"). Are there any alternative theories that are less problematic than inflation, and yet also solve the same problems that inflation solves?

People and scientific instruments are made of "normal" (non-Dark) matter, which makes it easy to detect other "normal" matter (electrons, protons, quarks, photons, neutrinos, what-have-you). It's hard for us and our instruments to detect or even be aware of Dark matter at laboratory scales, which operate over the electromagnetic and nuclear forces which Dark Matter feels little or not at all.

At astronomical scales, however, things are different. At those scales, gravity wins out, and is one of the dominant things we observe in astronomy. Dark Matter may not feel the electromagnetic and nuclear forces the way normal matter does, but it feels gravity the same as every other particle does. Nobody gets a pass from gravity, not even Dark Matter.

Consequently, it's relatively easy to observe the gravitational effects of Dark Matter at the astronomical scales of the rotation of galaxies and the dynamics of galaxy clusters, even while it's difficult or impossible to observe the non-gravitational effects of Dark Matter at laboratory scales.

"It's really disheartening to see you make these theories into an "us vs them" ego contest."

"I think your attitude is a perfect example of why science is said to advance one funeral at a time"

Hey now, don't you think that's a little uncalled-for? It's difficult to determine the attitude of a stranger over the internet via text.

"just because they got it wrong in the past doesn't mean they can never get it right, and it doesn't mean there's a 100% certainty that you got it right."

Nobody said either of these things, but people are entitled to extend to or withhold trust from purported experts based on the successful or not-so-successful application of their claimed expertise. If the MOND people and the MOG people keep getting things wrong, they're still free to persevere just as we're free to ignore them.

"the only reason it’s believed to exist at all is because a lot of otherwise well-understood equations and observations require it to exist."

I mean...those are pretty good reasons. If a particular theory successfully predicts more out of "a lot" of observations than any other competing theory does, and is a smaller departure from "a lot" of existing theory than any other competing theory is, would you choose to spend your career researching those competing theories?

Yeah, but it might've tamped down any perceived controversy even among laypeople, which would've saved many priceless electrons being spent debating the issue on the internet.

"If people understood that the last 200 years of science has shown that we are still utterly ignorant about the underpinnings of the universe"

That's a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think?

"But we are not very well educated so yeah, they will doubt it for no good reason other than "it doesn't feel right"

That's also an exaggeration. Laypersons are under no more obligation to understand the details of the scientific professions than scientists are to understand the details of, say, the legal profession. A healthy skepticism within the general public is harmless and even helpful if it maintains an interest in science. I would just gently urge people not to veer from skepticism into dogmatism.

"We have concrete evidence that either a) a new type of matter and energy exists, or b) our theories need to be modified in some way."

a new type of matter is a modification to our theories

"Until we either detect dark matter/energy, or develop a theory that accurately predicts the behaviour we're attributing to dark matter we cannot say one way or the other which is the correct approach."

"We" the general public isn't in the business of saying one way or the other is the correct approach, and scientists aren't, either. Scientists conduct experiments and propose theories in whatever lines of inquiry interest them, subject to the constraints of getting somebody to pay for it. Many scientists have been interested in refining the theory of Dark Matter and subjecting those refinements to experimental tests, partly because the theory has withstood and only grown stronger by those refinements and tests. That's a success by any measure, and that success is partly why public funding agencies have been willing to pay for it. Like anybody else, they try to pick winners.

It could also be that we are not accurately modelling EM/SR/GR effects at a large scale, such as how they are warped by the different stars orbiting the arms of the galaxies. Or that when we extend QED/QCD to accelerating reference frames (general relativity) that dark matter won't be needed, just like how QED was formulated by extending electromagnetism/QM to special relativity (non-accelerating reference frames).

It could be. Anything's possible.

You're not "wrong" per se as you're entitled to your views, but a fairly common alternative view goes something like this.

Yes, while we sometimes do pursue scientific inquiry for its practical application to the betterment of humanity, we also recognize the value of scientific inquiry simply for expanding the endowment of human knowledge about the world. That is an "innate good". Moreover, if history is any guide, it's sometimes or even often difficult to predict what practical applications will or won't emerge from any given scientific endeavor. In the case of Dark Matter, it may not be exactly the case that we will ever directly manipulate it in any scientific application. However, it may be the case that by grappling with Dark Matter we will refine and deepen our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature, and that will unlock future practical applications. Then there is the topic of "human capital": training people to be scientists trains cadres of people with strong skills in science, math, engineering, and computer science, which is an investment in that human capital. Often, they're well-equipped to go on to fruitful careers outside of their initial field of inquiry, producing innovations that benefit humanity. Finally, if it's a matter of cost, many people feel that the societal cost (e.g. federal expenditures on science) are puny compared to other things which I need not name here. Consequently, "basic science" which includes fundamental physics and the study of Dark Matter, is always a great investment for society.

Or something like that...that's my understanding of how that argument goes. Make of it what you will.

I agree with you. "Dark Matter" (and "Dark Energy") are colorful (colorless?) names that I think helped these theories diffuse into the popular consciousness at a time when popular interest in science was at a high-water mark (remember when "chaos theory" was fashionable?). As I mentioned in another comment recently (it feels like a "Dark Matter" or "Dark Energy" headline trends on HN almost every day), this coded these theories as "exotic" or "weird" as you say, and invited speculation about Dark Matter and even an urge to overturn it among laypeople who equated "exotic" with "tendentious." But, as you suggest, personally I don't regard Dark Matter as all that exotic. We already know about some species of "dark matter": the neutrino is one, and before that there was the neutron. Oh, well. I suppose there will be another episode on HN in a day or so.

I can't agree with this. No scientist says, "we know it's real because computer models but due to a fluke there's no dark matter in the solar system so we can't detect it." No scientist says, "we know it's real..." about anything. What scientists say is something like, "so far this theory has not been ruled out by evidence." So far, the theory of Dark Matter has not yet been ruled out by numerous attempts to do so along multiple independents lines of observational evidence:

- galaxy rotation curves

- galaxy cluster dynamics

- gravitational lensing

- the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation

- large-scale structure

- Baryon Acoustic Oscillations

- X-ray emission in galaxy clusters

- galaxy cluster collisions

- mass-to-light ratios

That's a tall order for any competing theories. They're welcome to try, of course, but so far none have succeeded.

I would guess, "It would take a very long time--possibly forever--because scientists don't typically become 'worried' by perceived shortfalls in theories, rather they become excited." Often, that excitement finds an outlet through modifications to the theory or to wholesale alternative theories. In the case of Dark Matter, there's no shortage of proposals to overturn Dark Matter. It seems like there's a new one on HN every day. But, "the more's the merrier", I say! If you ask me (nobody did), they're all welcome. The only catch is, they have got to surpass Dark Matter on all of the many independent lines of observational evidence supporting the theory of Dark Matter, yet in my limited experience they almost never do.

How do I get out of this chickensh*t outfit and onto that other timeline?