Controversies of Science

The documentary I'm putting together is VERY long, + is really more like a freshman-level university course on scientific controversies. First of its kind. Will include curated reading materials, short videos, thought-provoking conversations + some relevant comedy.

@cloneofsimo The reason that Einstein didn't need LLM's is because he had the body of knowledge already created by the electron + aether theorists, from which he stole most of his ideas. x.com/eternodevenir/…

Its very possible that LLM trained on newtonian physics may never come up with relativity to explain cosmic scale gravity. In that case Einstein would have to intervene and solve it instead. But would he have had come up with it, assuming he offloaded all the physics problem solving to LLMs? I think this is serious problem. Undoubtedly many GOATs are only GOATs because they built all the intuition from problem solving themselves. Grothendieck famously reinvented measure theory from scratch when he was teenager. If people offload their RL envs they couldve used, to LLMs, we will never get the next Einstein

@BrainyScience Keir Starmer's govt refuses to even defend their own border to protect UK's existing population, but the UK is gonna solve cancer? I'm not really following.

🚨 Cancer Treatment Just Got Faster A quiet shift is happening in cancer care—and most people haven’t even noticed yet. In places like England, doctors are beginning to use a faster way to deliver Immunotherapy, one of the most powerful modern treatments that helps the body’s own immune system fight cancer. But here’s what’s surprising… the breakthrough isn’t a brand-new drug. It’s the way it’s given. Instead of sitting for hours connected to an IV, some patients can now receive the same treatment through a quick injection under the skin—in just minutes. The science stays the same, but the experience completely changes. Less waiting. Less stress. More time to simply live. Hospitals using systems like the National Health Service are slowly introducing this method, and while it’s not for every patient yet, it’s already making treatment feel more manageable and less overwhelming. It may seem like a small change… but for many, it could make one of the hardest journeys just a little bit easier. Source National Health Service. (2024). Faster delivery of immunotherapy treatments in England.

Clearly, there are gonna be some books published real shortly here which talk extensively about how to properly learn + do research w AI.

One of the greatest AI risks is developing an unhealthy dependency to remain competitive with your peers. Offloading mundane and meticulous work is great, letting it do your thinking for you, and falling into the "AI will replace us" trap is a cataclysmic error.

@miniapeur I'm similarly amused you just assume that science will be automated. I've spoken to the AI researchers about this. Most of them still don't even know what they need to know to do it. It took me about 20 years to learn the things that they still don't know they need to know.

A bit exaggerated, but I am amused by people who think humanities won’t be automated by AI like sciences.

Neurodivergent people don’t recharge by sleeping. They recharge by being completely left alone long enough for their nervous system to reset

@NextScience Repeatedly, we are sold methods by virologists which later turn out to be complete bullshit. I've accordingly updated my starting-point hypothesis for everything virology to untrue.

🚨 The Virus Had One Hidden Weak Spot… AI Just Found It Scientists using artificial intelligence have discovered a microscopic weak point in the Herpes Simplex Virus. Deep inside the virus, there is a single amino acid that works like a key, helping it enter human cells. When researchers changed this tiny piece in lab tests, the virus could no longer infect cells. Just one small change… and the infection was stopped. AI made this possible by quickly scanning thousands of molecular interactions, something that would normally take years. It’s a powerful reminder that sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come from the smallest details.But there’s still a mystery. Scientists now need to see if this works inside the human body, where viruses behave in more complex ways. This discovery is just the beginning… but it could lead to future treatments that stop infections before they even start. Source 
(2025). AI-guided identification of a critical amino acid in herpes virus fusion protein.

@leecronin When you are trained from a very early age to be a Positivist, critical thinking is at best an aspiration or ideal. The best critical thinkers will be trained as Constructivists since it's already built into the curriculum.

It’s funny that some disciples of ‘critical thinking’ are themselves dogmatic & acting as gate keepers chasing away new ideas that don’t fit into their paradigm.

@ibab And I have now shifted my focus from learning new scientific controversies to thinking through what sort of infrastructure would be needed to crowdsource scientific controversies using AI. I now see that this is where all of the action will be.

@ibab I started tracking scientific controversies around 2006. So, I have a 20 year lead on the AI researchers. But my own understanding remains specialized. It would take more than a lifetime for me to learn all of them, so I now just focus on a handful that look very promising.

It seems inevitable that LLMs will soon surpass human physicists at creating new theories. The next big breakthrough in theoretical physics will likely come from someone prompting a model.