I talked about David W. Hogg's "Why do we do astrophysics?" in our seminar today.
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I talked about David W. Hogg's "Why do we do astrophysics?" in our seminar today. Thank to @aleks who posted about it here first!
I can only encourage everyone working in or interested in science and/or fundamental research to read it, it has broad relevance and the crucial parts, to me, are not even the LLM ones, but the ones that define the basis on which LLM use in astro is discussed.
️ https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10181v1 A few quotes:
1/6
"Practice of astrophysics cannot be learned from reading. [...] If you want to become an astrophysicist, it isn’t sufficient to read or take classes. You have to do it, and doing it requires doing novel things, that haven’t been done before, and which connect to important scientific questions in the literature."
2/6
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"Practice of astrophysics cannot be learned from reading. [...] If you want to become an astrophysicist, it isn’t sufficient to read or take classes. You have to do it, and doing it requires doing novel things, that haven’t been done before, and which connect to important scientific questions in the literature."
2/6
"People are always the ends, not merely the means. [...]
When we employ a graduate student to perform some work, it absolutely must be because the graduate student will benefit from that work, not merely because that work needs to get done."
3/6
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"People are always the ends, not merely the means. [...]
When we employ a graduate student to perform some work, it absolutely must be because the graduate student will benefit from that work, not merely because that work needs to get done."
3/6
"Astrophysics is (roughly) the astrophysics literature.
[...]
A measurement or an idea that is not disseminated, known or preserved is not pat of astrophysics
[...]
Software is written to support scientific literature; it executes ideas & believes, but the ideas and believes are gathered, disseminated & preserved in the literature"
4/6
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"Astrophysics is (roughly) the astrophysics literature.
[...]
A measurement or an idea that is not disseminated, known or preserved is not pat of astrophysics
[...]
Software is written to support scientific literature; it executes ideas & believes, but the ideas and believes are gathered, disseminated & preserved in the literature"
4/6
"You can’t do science if you don’t live within a network of trust. You have to trust your coauthors, you have to trust the literature, and you have to trust the machinery and tools that you use."
"A trusted partner is one that takes responsibility for their work."
5/6
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"You can’t do science if you don’t live within a network of trust. You have to trust your coauthors, you have to trust the literature, and you have to trust the machinery and tools that you use."
"A trusted partner is one that takes responsibility for their work."
5/6
"Anyone working in astrophysics is someone who wants to do astrophysics, not someone who wants to learn the answers; there are way more efficient ways to learn the answers."
6/6
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"You can’t do science if you don’t live within a network of trust. You have to trust your coauthors, you have to trust the literature, and you have to trust the machinery and tools that you use."
"A trusted partner is one that takes responsibility for their work."
5/6
@vicgrinberg This is the hill upon which science will either live or die on.
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@vicgrinberg This is the hill upon which science will either live or die on.
@masek I honestly think that either of the points mentioned arel.
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@masek I honestly think that either of the points mentioned arel.
@vicgrinberg IMHO if you win that point, all the others will be won at the same time.
I am not an astrophysicist or even a scientist (other than by education).
My job is mostly strategy. Foresee where and when battles will be fought and why... and to win them before anyone else knows they will happen.
We live in a time of historical crisis not seen for centuries.
José Ortega y Gasset defined such historical crisis as a change of fundamental ways of thinking.
The last crisis for him was the Renaissance where the belief-based mindset battled the knowledge-based mindset. The belief-based mindset lost.
Now we see the knowledge-based mindset being attacked. And the best way to defeat it would be to make a discourse about knowledge impossible.
As long as that discourse is alive, science cannot be vanquished.
But by destroying the network of trust, you make discourse impossible. You end up "my book says" vs. "the other book says" and with no way of resolving that other than by belief.
That is why my finger pointed there...
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@vicgrinberg IMHO if you win that point, all the others will be won at the same time.
I am not an astrophysicist or even a scientist (other than by education).
My job is mostly strategy. Foresee where and when battles will be fought and why... and to win them before anyone else knows they will happen.
We live in a time of historical crisis not seen for centuries.
José Ortega y Gasset defined such historical crisis as a change of fundamental ways of thinking.
The last crisis for him was the Renaissance where the belief-based mindset battled the knowledge-based mindset. The belief-based mindset lost.
Now we see the knowledge-based mindset being attacked. And the best way to defeat it would be to make a discourse about knowledge impossible.
As long as that discourse is alive, science cannot be vanquished.
But by destroying the network of trust, you make discourse impossible. You end up "my book says" vs. "the other book says" and with no way of resolving that other than by belief.
That is why my finger pointed there...
@masek @vicgrinberg this is something I have been writing toward from a personal angle, as well as from a technology angle.
I note I am not alone in this. There are other isles of coherence. They kerp showing up.
There is a convergence here we are all mapping.
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"You can’t do science if you don’t live within a network of trust. You have to trust your coauthors, you have to trust the literature, and you have to trust the machinery and tools that you use."
"A trusted partner is one that takes responsibility for their work."
5/6
@vicgrinberg Underrated comment
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@vicgrinberg IMHO if you win that point, all the others will be won at the same time.
I am not an astrophysicist or even a scientist (other than by education).
My job is mostly strategy. Foresee where and when battles will be fought and why... and to win them before anyone else knows they will happen.
We live in a time of historical crisis not seen for centuries.
José Ortega y Gasset defined such historical crisis as a change of fundamental ways of thinking.
The last crisis for him was the Renaissance where the belief-based mindset battled the knowledge-based mindset. The belief-based mindset lost.
Now we see the knowledge-based mindset being attacked. And the best way to defeat it would be to make a discourse about knowledge impossible.
As long as that discourse is alive, science cannot be vanquished.
But by destroying the network of trust, you make discourse impossible. You end up "my book says" vs. "the other book says" and with no way of resolving that other than by belief.
That is why my finger pointed there...
@masek I see your point - though I disagree on "win this points, all others are won". I can easily imagine a set up where the trust is there, but people are only reading/learning/reproducing not doing. And that would also be an end of science as such.
But this is of course colored by me having read the whole paper and thus having a different feeling for what the individual citations mean as opposed to when one reads them hear out of the context.
(And would love to learn more about your work!)
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@vicgrinberg Underrated comment
@gtsadmin this one blew my mind - it's a concept I struggled with phrasing for a while, really captured!
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I talked about David W. Hogg's "Why do we do astrophysics?" in our seminar today. Thank to @aleks who posted about it here first!
I can only encourage everyone working in or interested in science and/or fundamental research to read it, it has broad relevance and the crucial parts, to me, are not even the LLM ones, but the ones that define the basis on which LLM use in astro is discussed.
️ https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10181v1 A few quotes:
1/6
@vicgrinberg Thanks for the pointer! My area is mathematics, but---as you suggested---many of his comments are broadly relevant. I found his left-edge v.s. right-edge concepts around "clinical applications" interesting as a different presentation of some very well-worn issues in math research.
Separately (but not as much as I would like), his comment "We beat ploughshares into swords" is important, even if uncomfortable (maybe especially *because* it's uncomfortable).
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@vicgrinberg Thanks for the pointer! My area is mathematics, but---as you suggested---many of his comments are broadly relevant. I found his left-edge v.s. right-edge concepts around "clinical applications" interesting as a different presentation of some very well-worn issues in math research.
Separately (but not as much as I would like), his comment "We beat ploughshares into swords" is important, even if uncomfortable (maybe especially *because* it's uncomfortable).
@nilesjohnson glad it was useful and thanks for letting me know!
I found the right/left edge part least convincing from the paper, in particular for astronomy (because a major "application" / edge issue is the perspective change that astronomy offers), & had the feeling that he himself struggled with in the text. But it's a good thought-provoking discussion anyway and worth thinking about.
And yeah, the ploughshares into swords ... especially for work that can only be done from space like mine
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I talked about David W. Hogg's "Why do we do astrophysics?" in our seminar today. Thank to @aleks who posted about it here first!
I can only encourage everyone working in or interested in science and/or fundamental research to read it, it has broad relevance and the crucial parts, to me, are not even the LLM ones, but the ones that define the basis on which LLM use in astro is discussed.
️ https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10181v1 A few quotes:
1/6
@vicgrinberg I agree with most of David’s comments. On a different topic, I’m a bit annoyed that there seems to be a double standard with respect to what is acceptable as a paper on the arxiv and what not.
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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@vicgrinberg I agree with most of David’s comments. On a different topic, I’m a bit annoyed that there seems to be a double standard with respect to what is acceptable as a paper on the arxiv and what not.
@hannorein I feel that - being on archive gives the paper a gravitas that a random text on someone's website would not have (and at least to me it's not clear that this is intended for submission to anywhere else in any form...).
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@hannorein I feel that - being on archive gives the paper a gravitas that a random text on someone's website would not have (and at least to me it's not clear that this is intended for submission to anywhere else in any form...).
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@knud @vicgrinberg He can do that. Not many others would get past the moderators with these kind of "papers".
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@knud @vicgrinberg He can do that. Not many others would get past the moderators with these kind of "papers".
@hannorein @knud yeah...
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@knud @vicgrinberg He can do that. Not many others would get past the moderators with these kind of "papers".
Which is a shame. The 2022 writeup on distance moduli, magnitudes, k-correction and other things is better than anything I've seen in a textbook so far. So in my opinion it's a very valuable resource.
