I like the sentiment, but there are non-peer reviewed papers that are real science. Politics and funding are real things, and there is a bit of gatekeeping here, which isn't really good IMHO.
Also, reproducibility is a sticky subject, especially with immoral experiments (which can still be the product of science, however unsavory), or experiments for which there are only one apparatus in the world (e.g., some particle physics).
The things you’re describing are not science. This might seem nit picky but the scientific method as we know it today require that peer review and require methods of reproduction. Whether you can reproduce results is a different story.
The entire difference between research and science is whether or not you engage in the process of peer review and review often requires method of replication. So you usually can’t have one without the other. If you aren’t trying to have your paper reviewed by your peers, that’s fine, but that isn’t science.
To address the gatekeeping, I get it. We shouldn’t be using the word to demean people who do valuable research but don’t strictly engage in the scientific process. That’s really not important to do. However we should all be interested in preventing the scientific process from being muddied to include every R&D process under the sun. That’s all research, not science, and we call them separate things for a reason.
I think the word you're looking for is merit, publication which are cited and peer reviewed hold much more merit than those who don't.
Science is a rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. 1
Nothing in this quote requires external publication. Following the scientific method, publishing, peer reviewing and reproduction can all happen internally in organisation using independent teams. Those private publications hold but a fraction of the merit of publications in recognised journals, but are science nonetheless.
Imagine telling Yann LeCun what is and isn’t right when it comes to science
honestly LeCun should know better than to argue with a crazy person.
it doesn't matter how right he is, musk will turn everything around and have fun while doing it.
Seems like a very elitist and gatekeeping perspective, specially considering how closed off the academic world is for the rest of society in some places, never mind expensive to publish. It's also basically saying that if you, say, come up with a groundbreaking hypothesis, that that's not science until you get a research paper out, and that might require mastery that goes beyond the hypothesis.
Sure, this might stop most of the looney theories from being called Science, but it also prevents public access in favor of those with the means and capacity to sustain an ever more complex geocentric model of the fashion of the times, from which any divergent theories must generally part from or involve renown in.
You think the person who made that hypothesis will die bitter and forgotten? Is that the general view of people who are not Scientists by Scientists? They might know what's up, and might not want the gatekeeper to take all the credit, as is often the case in academic circles, and might just feel satisfaction in seeing their hypothesis gratified. They might place more importance in exploring and understanding reality than compensating for personal insecurities. Perhaps it is science itself that might stagnate by stalling until it itself is able to discover these hypothesis under the properly accepted emeritus when they are eventually able to get to it.
Mostly it's just looney theories, but given Musk is involved, I imagine this discussion involves proprietary patents that do have a lot of research involved and under peer review of teams under non-disclosure agreements. Then again, it's Musk, could be mostly looney theories too. But the fact that it involves Musk, the man living off of Nikola Tesla's fame, a man whose demise could have been described to have occurred under the circumstances of a bitter and forgotten end, makes the gatekeeping particularly ironic.
Science is a specific social activity that humans engage in (emphasis on social). Science is not the same as fact-finding, or philosophizing, or reasoning. It’s a particular method of peer review that generates shared public knowledge.
Again, “science” is something humans do together. Experimenting, investigating, puzzling, hypothesizing, intuiting, discovering, and knowing are all things you can do alone.
Science is a particular method of peer review...?
This thread prompted me to revisit what I think "science" means, and I've been through a number of different Wikipedia pages, dictionary definitions, etc. but that inquiry just reinforced that this "science == participation in the institutions/communities of science" idea just doesn't seem to hold up.
Where does this idea come from? I keep seeing this "science is this very particular thing, it's not just forming falsifiable hypotheses and then testing them," but then when I look it up, the sources I find say exactly the opposite.
EDIT: To respond, backwards, to the edit below, I guess...? That's not really a gotcha, and not really what I was saying, lol. Please read the whole thread.
Fuck, I really hate to agree with Elon on anything, but that is a ridiculous argument. LeCun must also really believe that trees only fall in the woods when someone is around to see it happen.
Yeah, they're both pretty wildly off base. Publishing papers that are vetted and used as a foundation for other work is science. Also, sorry, but developing advancements behind closed doors is still science. Oppenheimer's secret research for the government is pretty fucking foundational. Thomas Edison wasn't interested in sharing his ideas, but rather in selling them. Everyone remembers him.
This argument reads like two people having an ego trip past each other.
I am a bit worried the response to this here is not a unified everyone's an asshole in this screenshot.
Academic publishing is in a very sorry state for a long time by now. A lot of research that is published is not reproducible. A lot of actual research is also in fact never published like that because companies base their products on it and publish those results only as patents.
So just by trying to be smug and oppose the Muskie you show yourself to be an idiot. Well done.
There are differences between "experimenting", "research", "analysis" and "science". You can do the first three at your home, scribbling some notes that no one will ever read or know about, but science, in its hard definition, is a methodology that requires the specific dynamics that are expected of the scientific community, where plenty of people check each other's work for faults, blind spots, biases, lazy interpretations and so on.
This is fundamental because everyone, including universally recognized geniuses, do sometimes fuck up. Have you heard of Einstein's famous phrase "God does not play dice with the universe"? This refers to his conviction that the laws of physics were fundamentally deterministic, which was put in question by the early experiments that were opening the way for quantum physics. Einstein found himself at odds with a new generation of physicists that weren't as inflexible as he was on this issue, and whenever there were indications that extremely small particles may behave in a non-deterministic way, Einstein would argue and push for the most hostile interpretation possible, which did lead other physicists to put his interpretations to the test, which did ironically further prove the non-deterministic pillars of quantum physics.
Science is necessarily a social endeavor because it is meant to help us overcome the fact that each individual human is doomed to be, sooner or later, at one specific issue of many, an inflexible idiot.
Your last sentence is pure poetry.
They both come across as pompous asses in this one.
If you develop a product in secret, take it to market, and make a fortune off it, far more people will know your name than almost any scientist.
They've been feuding for a while so I'd be surprised if they both didn't try to one-up the other insufferably.
Btw his bio is:
- Professor at NYU
- Chief AI Scientist at Meta
- ACM Turing Award Laurete
Yeah he's a legend in CS... Muskrat just further rides himself into being the fool of centuries
Yann LeCun is not a good person, but at least he's significantly smarter than Elon
I know nothing about him, what did he do?
For starters, he’s both French and works for Meta. 😏
But beyond that, from a professional perspective this guy has pioneered so much stuff that we take for granted today; like check scanning and OCR. I mean he is touted as one of the godfathers of ai.
If you science in a lab and no one is around to review it did you make a science?
The difference between science and fucking around is writing it down - Adam Savage
I've read plenty of times about bullshit published papers that disprove it must be correct and reproducable to get published.
Edit: Where did I claim it was or wasn't science? I'm pointing out the statement that "to be published it must be checked for correctness" simply isn't true.
Some published papers are not reproducible. All unpublished papers are not reproducible. You’re creating a dangerously wrong equivalence.
I feel like I'm missing something here so I'll be the devil's advocate, why can't unpublished papers be reproducible? Multiple teams could independently be verifying hypotheses and results under the same organisation, adhere to the same standard but never publish, that would still be science no? Not doing humanity any favours, but science nonetheless.
The rules and conventions to do science today are quite well known and understood by educated people (including of course Helen Mosque) ... but any rules have exceptions :
Project Manhattan to produce the atomic bomb was secret science : in many countries military will have secret science development. Pharmaceutical companies will do as well.
People in those projects will not have recognition by the wider public but they will have recognition from their group.Heck, I can think of a half dozen other examples of things that aren't published and/or can't be reproduced but would be considered science.
If I had an unpublished workbook of Albert Einstein, would I say the work in it "isn't science"?
If I publish a book outlining a hypothesis about the origins of the Big Bang, is it not science because it doesn't have any reproducible experiments?
Is any research that deadends in a uninteresting way that isn't worthy of publication not science?
I like dunking on Elon as much as the next guy, but like, "only things that are published get the title of 'science'" seems like a pretty indefensible take to me...
Well somebody is about to find his Twitter account closed for a spurious reason.
But my freeze peach!
She's wrong though, everything following the scientific method is science. The fact that you didn't pay out of your ass to publicize your research doesn't matter. Of course it reaches less people, but that's a separate issue.
Science, real science like Elon is describing, happens when you write stuff down. "Published science" is where the glamor is but that's, quite obviously, not what Elon was talking about.
So sad to see bitter people lash out at the successful. (projection is also a classic trait)
Science requires peer review, so just keeping it all private isn't doing much for the scientific community as a whole
Published science requires peer review. Big difference.
"good for the community" isn't relevant to being science.
