What do you find the most great scientific accomplishment ?

While it may not qualify as an absolute scientific accomplishment JWST is definitely shaking up theories about cosmos. I do think it does matter enough to consider it as huge accomplishment.
If only all the money spent on useless wars went to such experiments.
 
Anything that brings people to live in peace, freedom, without hunger in an intact environment.

For that we need to get rid of greed, immoderation, and above all any kind of dogmatic believes aka religion.
(I don't have nothing against people believing in god, as long as they don't offend others believing in another, "wrong", or no god.)

We need to learn talking to each other with the goal to solve problems on the base of science,
not to prevail personal interests.
To quote Stephen Hawking's voice from Pink Floyd's "The Divison Bell":
"All we need to do is keep talking."

At the moment our society keeps accelerating into the opposite direction.
Look at people staring at their smartphones, not talking anymore. (I got rid of mine several years ago.)
Worse, many are not even capable anymore for real human communication.
Not demented old people but more and more young people (<30) become aggressive when you talk normally to them,
not lowering you to their level. They feel outsmarted just by common language, because they are stupid. (Of course they see themselves way much smarter as anybody.)

Language and capabilities of the mind go together.

Almost weekly scientific reports prove what my wife, me, and our friends experience daily in real life:
(My wife is a teacher.)
At the moment our society is heading full speed ahead into a social catastrophy.
Just yesterday again a link on HN to The Guardian

Believe it or not, but I see philosophy as to be the most important science we need to engage today, not physics (I have a MS in engineering. I didn't changed sides, but I learned to face reality, and search for solutions.)



Any step forward in medicine curing deseases.

In my eyes we should not invest zillions in OpenAI or such, as long as we don't have a cure for cancer, alzheimer, and parkinson.
Yes, yes, I know: "AI can help..."
In several years - when the hype is cooling down again ("there is a new, all-promising technology one can invest, so hype it!") many will be surprised what AI all can not do, it's even worse for, or was at least more ineffecient than 'traditional' ways.
AI has its purposes, no question. But it's simply not the jack of all trades super solution for all of our problems as it's sold at the moment.

AI is an assistant tool, not more, not less.
No assistance can be used for everything, nor can it be a full replacement for anything.

Of course people are made to believe that.
Lots of money is into it and now it's time for the ROI.
To me AI is like pocket calculators: They are of no good use if one doesn't know math.
Math teachers were right trying to prevent those from school.
Now we have them. And? Are more people better at math, or does the opposite may come closer to the truth?
Also we have word correction and proposing software everywhere. To me it's a pest.
Did the writing became better, or worse?
Today you don't get any newspaper no more without typos, and misspelling.
Though, or because of assistance software used wrong?

Btw:
A couple of weeks ago I read on BBC that in USA and Europe alone approximately 300M (M, not k) jobs will get lost by AI.
A quick rough estimation will give the picture of round about half the working force we have at the moment.
Does anybody ask the question what all the people laid off because of AI shall do within a non communistic but capitalistic society? And what may happen is this ain't be solved?

In comparison the problems we had in the 1980s and 1990s by automation by NC, and outsourcing production to asia was a cake walk.
Just blaming the laid off by "be flexible", "learn", and "get a job" won't do anymore.
AI will kill the medium and top class jobs, such as programmers (we already see firing in this sector at the moment), and management, and many, many jobs at computers - so everything you needed a good schooling for.
Any ideas?
Of course not.
At the moment we don't have time to think about that.
At the moment we need all our power to push AI forward.
We always solved problems afterwards, when it was too late; even when it was expecting.
And by solved I mean covered.



All physics, quantum-mechanics, space travel, search for extraterrastial life,...
is luxury for a society who can afford it.
We still have the money, and the people with the brain power for that,
but can we really afford it to focus on that?
 
Crivens said:
I'd say the biggest step was establishing the scientific method itself.
Click to expand...
I agree.
But we never fully internalized it into our society.
Instead I observe we are falling back on to scholastic - the "scientific art" of proving something by who's producing the most comprehendsable clues.
 
user rude said:
I agree.
But we never fully internalized it into our society.
Instead I observe we are falling back on to scholastic - the "scientific art" of proving something by who's producing the most comprehendsable clues.
Click to expand...
We are falling back into the religion stage, where it is more important who said it for it to be "right". Where you learn what to think and not how, and - god forbid - on your own without supervision. How would our society look if we valued truth about all else? And new ideas?
 
Issac Newton's works. Notable mention: Copernicus works, which many others are comparable to that.

For now, I'd like to see computers with analog parts. Inputs can be digital or analog depending on the type of data. For outputs to the analog world, for sound and visuals, the data can be processed to analog, where it doesn't have to be exactly replicated each time. Inputs can be analog for controllers. Data which is set and not meant to be changed, can be in digital. For instance, replacing wire placements for problem solving with digital inputs. Data for preservation and mass transfer can be digital. Originals and filters can be analog or maybe a combination of digital and analog.
 
when it comes to hallmarks - then it is 2, which summarize all the hundreds years of scientific method.
1. the hydrogen bomb - the center of the stars in miniature and we are all just dead stars dust
2. the DNA structure discovery
The 2 unlocked how we are built and what makes the brains which were able to unlock 1
Both has happened almost at the same time
This is an ultimate combination, consequences of which are manifold ...
 
Crivens said:
We are falling back into the religion stage, where it is more important who said it for it to be "right". Where you learn what to think and not how, and - god forbid - on your own without supervision. How would our society look if we valued truth about all else? And new ideas?
Click to expand...
That's what I said in other words, but yes, I agree, resp. fear the same.

New ideas are not really needed.
As always when humankind faces problems, ignores what already is known, and postpone any solution to new research, which is also ignored if inconvenient.

And for most problems we have we don't need new technology.
(As I said, I'm an engineer. I love new technology. But that also means I knew how to solve problems systematically, so can distinguish useful things from useless garbage, functional from toys.)

We just need the will to do it.
They could be solved mostly by just changing our mind, the way we look at and think about things.
Example:
We could reduce CO2 emission by 50% within days,
if everybody reduces his fuel consumption by driving less with a smaller car, eat half the meat, buys half the stuff... and nobody in "western hemisphere" would suffer of lack.

Don't need neither battery cars, nor any change of power supply for that.
Of course this would not be the final solution.
But 50% reduction would gives us lots of time to think about it properly, and puts us on the right way, anyway.
But no!
Produce even more cars, and built more power plants...
"Buy a new printer every three years, because it produces 5% less CO2!"
But it costs way more resources, produces more CO2-emission for production and transportation, and waste, than if I could have used the old "dirty" one for another two years.

The principles we need are all already thought of, partially two and half thousand years ago (interesting: they already had to think about the same issues as we do today)
by e.g. Epikur, Descartes (not yet that scientific, but a good start), Pascal, Spinoza, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and many others.

Wilhelm Weischedel, "Die philosophische Hintertreppe" (I don't know if there is any english translation (according to wikipedia: DK, NL, N, RO, HR, SK, E, CZ, TR), but if I remember right Crivens speaks german.)

Waiting for new technologies are just an excuse for preventing action.

sidetone said:
For now, I'd like to see computers with analog parts.
Click to expand...

A comprehensable answer would take a "brief" lecture in electronics.
But to give you a quick-and-dirty short statement:

There is a good reason why computers are digital.
An analog computer is per se no problem at all.
They are way - way - faster than any digital machine.
But the catch is, you only can design those for a single operation only - "hardwired", and they need lots of power and cooling if complex operations at high precision are needed (Example: Targeting systems in World War 1 submarines)
If you want something to be used for multi purposes aka programmable, such as the machines we have today, and it should stay smaller as a sports hall, cost less than two air craft carriers, and doesn't need the niagara power plants for power and cooling, then digital is your choice.

But of course I could have misunderstood you.

So, I'm off this thread.
Already posted too much, and went off topic (Sorry Alain, I hope you're not angry.)
 
sidetone said:
Issac Newton's works. Notable mention: Copernicus works, which many others are comparable to that.

For now, I'd like to see computers with analog parts. Inputs can be digital or analog depending on the type of data. For outputs to the analog world, for sound and visuals, the data can be processed to analog, where it doesn't have to be exactly replicated each time. Inputs can be analog for controllers. Data which is set and not meant to be changed, can be in digital. For instance, replacing wire placements for problem solving with digital inputs. Data for preservation and mass transfer can be digital. Originals and filters can be analog or maybe a combination of digital and analog.
Click to expand...
en.wikipedia.org

Abacus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
:p

It has wires, too. And did you know that older data storage designs were inspired by how the abacus works?
 
user rude said:
There is a good reason why computers are digital.
An analog computer is per se no problem at all.
They are way - way - faster than any digital machine.
But the catch is, you only can design those for a single operation only - "hardwired", and they need lots of power and cooling if complex operations at high precision are needed (Example: Targeting systems in World War 1 submarines)
If you want something to be used for multi purposes aka programmable, such as the machines we have today, and it should stay smaller as a sports hall, cost less than two air craft carriers, and doesn't need the niagara power plants for power and cooling, then digital is your choice.

But of course I could have misunderstood you.
Click to expand...
It was about hybrid digital and analog, where each one performs extraordinarily or in a fascinating way. With further thinking, about outputting digital calculator or computer output through GPIO or parallel ports to an analog computer component. Most data and equations need to be in digital form, then output to the analog computer component. I also think that graphics processing for visual and audio electrical output could be analog (speakers are already this, but maybe a little further back before the audio signal is transmitted through the copper wires, to the processing for output). Also, audio filters from microphones meant to be digitized can be analog, because there's no requirement for an exact cutoff point, that affects the quality.

Streaming always needs to be in digital, unless a future version of analog can somehow save on bandwidth. Digital copies always need to be digital. Original masters of non-numerical (sound and audio) data could be either digital, analog or a combination of both. We sense through analog, so more of the output could be processed in analog form, from the digital medium or data. Or maybe in closeups of DVD quality video, digital can be processed in both digital and analog so the analog implementation would be an average blur instead of squares when zoomed in. This is as an example, since in sharper quality images this would be less noticeable to explain it.


[abacus]
astyle said:
It has wires, too. And did you know that older data storage designs were inspired by how the abacus works?
Click to expand...
An abacus came to mind when I first looked into analog computers. The physical switching of wires to create an output calculation reminded me of that. In elementary school, they said how that was the first form of a computer. Though, it's not an electronic computer in any sense. Those strings aren't electrical wires. If an abacus is considered a computer, a harp or guitar would be non-electrical computer like for music. Would a slide rule or sextant be a nonelectrical computer? We think of computers as electrical computers.
 
Well, the greatest achievement, in my view, is infrastructure.

Infrastructure, meaning a functional, international mail and banking system. Because this is the enablement for everything else. This is what made it possible for the occidental culture to conquer nearly the entire world. And this was initially achieved (except in China where they had it earlier) by the Knights Templar. This is the actual truth behind the famed "secret of the Templars".

user rude said:
At the moment our society keeps accelerating into the opposite direction. Look at people staring at their smartphones, not talking anymore. (I got rid of mine several years ago.) Worse, many are not even capable anymore for real human communication.
Click to expand...

Yes. This is worrysome. But it doesn't come out of thin air.
There is an ideology that men have to be equal. Now, putting a funnel into a stupid's head and fill in wisdom, that doesn't work. So the only way to make people equal is to make the wise more stupid.
This is an idea that is popular among socialists. In Cambodia they shot everybody wearing glasses, because those were apparently able to read. So this is not something new.

But when in former times these were isolated phenomena of local socialist dictatorships, nowadays there is a global economic interest in these efforts. Because the FAANG and their friends need a globally uniform market of equally stupid people that they can operate and manipulate.
And they don't need to shoot people anymore; nowadays they have Smartphones.

We need to learn talking to each other with the goal to solve problems on the base of science, not to prevail personal interests.
Click to expand...

Oh, be careful with that. Back when I worked as business consultant, there were lots of PhD in my team, Doctors of Chemistry, of Physics, etc. So it was quite normal to actually work with scientists.

Nowadays things are different. Nowadays when there is talk about science, the scientists are somewhere remote, you don't meet them. They're presented in the TV, in the media, and you are expected to obey them, to believe in them, to pray to them.

And if you look close enough, these scientists are not really scientists, they're actually lobbyists of the industry.

Science is now just another religion, a believe system - and there is a witch-hunt underway against the non-believers. Wait, wasn't there something... yeah: Are you a believer? (Beware, there is a point in this - Laeta Kalogridis is not stupid.)
 
user rude said:
In my eyes we should not invest zillions in OpenAI or such, as long as we don't have a cure for cancer, alzheimer, and parkinson.
Yes, yes, I know: "AI can help..."
Click to expand...

It seems You not yet see the importance in A.I.

See, in my youth there was a local doctor, who came into the house when there was an illness, and he had his doctor's bag with him and knew a lot of things.

Nowadays if there is an illness, you have to go to the doctor (and if you can't you have to see to yourself), and the doctor sits before a computer, and the computer tells him what to do. (I usually found it more efficient to just read the computer myself and then tell the doctor what to do.)
And consequentially, as it is anyway the computer that says what to do, we can as well do away with the doctor.

So what's the point here? The iatrogenic illness industry is one of the biggest economic factors. And they pay a lot of money to get the studies they need to sell their products.
But then there is still the individual doctors with their own wits who need to be convinced.
So if we can do away with these, there is a lot more certainty for our ROI. (And remember, that's your pension fund investing.)
 
PMc said:
Nowadays if there is an illness, you have to go to the doctor (and if you can't you have to see to yourself), and the doctor sits before a computer, and the computer tells him what to do. (I usually found it more efficient to just read the computer myself and then tell the doctor what to do.)
And consequentially, as it is anyway the computer that says what to do, we can as well do away with the doctor.
Click to expand...
True. For some time now, when I go to a doctor and tell him what's wrong with me, he digs into computer and only then writes me a prescription. One time, he was about to write out prescription, but I remembered something else and only then told him. Then he entered it into the computer and said: oh, you see, now I'm getting a different medicine.
 
I'm going to go back in the time-tunnel to the Sumerians, to the inventions of maths, writing, measurement, astronomy, and the first known "information technology" - clay tablet libraries. They laid the foundations that eventually led to the modern world.

Their inventions of writing, numbers, measurement, arithmetic, maths, logic, and engineering must surely rank as some of the greatest human scientific achievements of all time. From the perspective of geological time, no other species has developed a culture of this type since the dawn of life, over hundreds of millions of years. We ourselves are so used to these things in our own lives that we don't realise how unusual they are compared to the untold eons of time that went before their discovery.

Before those inventions, humans and their ancestor hominids lived for hundreds of thousands... to millions of years, using stone tools with very slow rates of technological change and very limited material cultures. But something happened 7000 or so years ago, the late neolithic explosion with the sudden development of agriculture, maths, writing, reading, libraries, astronomy, measurement, architecture, complex societies, the very first cities.

Similar developments appear to have occurred independently in china, mesopotamia, egypt, the indus valley, perhaps elsewhere, all around the same time. Seemingly in the blink of an eye, humans changed from hunter-gatherer band societies to the first 'civilisations'. I don't think anyone knows for certain why it happened at that time. Perhaps it was linked to the end of the last glaciation and climate change.

Even if we allow that older cultures existed such as gobekli tepe, the level of scientific, technological and cultural sophistication achieved by the sumerians was unlike anything seen on earth before that time. Sadly we have forgotton the names of the many great minds of that time who made those advances. The 5000 years since the sumerians to our own time is merely a blink of an eye on the timescale of the biosphere.

www.history.com

9 Ancient Sumerian Inventions That Changed the World | HISTORY

The Sumerian people of Mesopotamia had a flair for innovation. Here's how they left their mark.
www.history.com www.history.com

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfYYraMgiBA


2024-03-07-22:32:53_1280x800.png
 
PMc said:
Science is now just another religion, a believe system - and there is a witch-hunt underway against the non-believers.
Click to expand...
yeah, like genetic engineering, abortion, book bans in schools - you name it, it's gonna have two sides that are in bitter, perpetual conflict with each other over it. 😩
 
PMc said:
Oh, be careful with that.
Click to expand...
You misunderstood me.
I didn't mean "working with scientists" or "talking about science" were a problem,
I ment the way we talk is not the scientific way: listen to the other, when he or she says you're wrong, instead of keep repeating "is so!!"
Even most scientists I know are not capable of this art of converstion no more.

And yes, you're right. Science is misused as a new kind of support religion, to support our other main religions of infinite growth, and capitalizm.
But this is also not scientific.

And you are right. My wife needed to go into hospital's emergency room a few weeks ago.
All doctors were sitting in front of computers, while the patients ly lonesome in rooms for over 9(!) hours, and nothing happend.

I thought I pointed out to differ the differences between benefits and dangers of AI.
According to our pension:
How shall our society pay the pension, which depends directly on the working force, when half the people are going to be laid off? (Do you believe you stock will grow infinite. Who's going to pay that?)

From the point of view of business administration it's a neat idea to increase ROI by reducing costs, by firing, and have the remaining be exploited at 130%, and then left them burned out to society.
From the point of view of economics it's a quite more difficult question.
Since when too many are laid off, the system breaks.
The taxes needed for social security need to be raised by fewer people - and that's what of course nobody wants to pay higher taxes for more and more "lazy bumps."
And additionally the fewer people work, the fewer customers, the less revenue.

If no one works anymore within a capitalistic system (and for sure we don't want communism),
nothing could be sold anymore, cause nobody has no money anymore.
Any idea to solve that, without being accused "socialist" or "communist"?
"We need new markets!" - of course.
Without become specific, this are just empty words.
Any idea? No.
"Scientists will find a solution...."
(believe in the religion of somethong called "science", but don't do, what scientists already figured out, and proved.)



But after participating this thread, and understaning the "game"
I revisited my post,
and also want to add my most scientific accomplishment to human kind:

1709875345489.png
​


peace out.
I am out of here.
 
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