It is so strange to read about oneself from the outside like this, and to discover that one's words – one's imperfect thoughts, ineptly and lossily translated into even more imperfect words – have had such impact. I am deeply moved. Thank you, Eli.
Wtf Eli this is so cool, you are rekindling my long abandoned dream of somehow working at the intersection of astrophysics and biology (memories of being 18 and desperately wanting to be an astrobiologist)
I love the willingness to risk being wrong. I don’t love how quickly the article converts being interestingly right about an observation into being right about the mechanism.
Finding unexpectedly early massive black holes would certainly make a prediction of a cosmological model interesting. But it doesn’t establish that black holes produce daughter universes, that physical parameters are inherited with variation, or that differential reproduction has selected our universe for black-hole production. Those are precisely the mechanisms that would make the process evolutionary rather than merely analogous to evolution.
“Why wouldn’t evolution apply to universes?” isn’t enough. Evolution isn’t synonymous with increasing complexity. It requires a reproductive and inheritance structure capable of selection.
And JWST observing early black holes cannot by itself supply that missing structure. Several different mechanisms can predict or accommodate the same observation.
A risky prediction deserves attention when it succeeds. But prediction and causal explanation are not the same achievement.
The childlike part of science worth preserving is the courage to ask outrageous questions. The other half of science is considerably less romantic: once reality answers, you have to be ruthless about determining exactly what the answer actually supports.
And this is especially relevant after my conversation with Curt Jaimungal.
This is a beautiful example of why “how do you test it?” is not the enemy of audacious thought. Gough deserves credit precisely to the extent that he turned an idea into discriminating predictions. But the same standard then prevents us from saying that a compatible observation has validated all the speculative ontology sitting upstream of that prediction.
Psa 147:4.." He counts the number of the stars. He calls them all by their names.Isa 40:26 Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these, who brings out their host by number. He calls them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power, not one is lacking.Isa 40:25 “To whom then will you liken me? Who is my equal?” says the Holy One."
( There is no "time" in Space . without Consciousness " )...First ...:+)
It is so strange to read about oneself from the outside like this, and to discover that one's words – one's imperfect thoughts, ineptly and lossily translated into even more imperfect words – have had such impact. I am deeply moved. Thank you, Eli.
Wtf Eli this is so cool, you are rekindling my long abandoned dream of somehow working at the intersection of astrophysics and biology (memories of being 18 and desperately wanting to be an astrobiologist)
I love the willingness to risk being wrong. I don’t love how quickly the article converts being interestingly right about an observation into being right about the mechanism.
Finding unexpectedly early massive black holes would certainly make a prediction of a cosmological model interesting. But it doesn’t establish that black holes produce daughter universes, that physical parameters are inherited with variation, or that differential reproduction has selected our universe for black-hole production. Those are precisely the mechanisms that would make the process evolutionary rather than merely analogous to evolution.
“Why wouldn’t evolution apply to universes?” isn’t enough. Evolution isn’t synonymous with increasing complexity. It requires a reproductive and inheritance structure capable of selection.
And JWST observing early black holes cannot by itself supply that missing structure. Several different mechanisms can predict or accommodate the same observation.
A risky prediction deserves attention when it succeeds. But prediction and causal explanation are not the same achievement.
The childlike part of science worth preserving is the courage to ask outrageous questions. The other half of science is considerably less romantic: once reality answers, you have to be ruthless about determining exactly what the answer actually supports.
And this is especially relevant after my conversation with Curt Jaimungal.
This is a beautiful example of why “how do you test it?” is not the enemy of audacious thought. Gough deserves credit precisely to the extent that he turned an idea into discriminating predictions. But the same standard then prevents us from saying that a compatible observation has validated all the speculative ontology sitting upstream of that prediction.
Audacity generates possibilities. Constraint eliminates them. Science needs both.
Psa 147:4.." He counts the number of the stars. He calls them all by their names.Isa 40:26 Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these, who brings out their host by number. He calls them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power, not one is lacking.Isa 40:25 “To whom then will you liken me? Who is my equal?” says the Holy One."
( There is no "time" in Space . without Consciousness " )...First ...:+)