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Imagine telling Yann LeCun what is and isn’t right when it comes to science
thanks to melon tusk, i don’t have to
Who he?
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.
Oh yeah strictly speaking if you follow the scientific method you are doing “science” however what the twitter thread is getting at and what I’m getting at is that science without the scientific process isn’t the same thing. Typically in a professional setting we just call that research.
The scientific process contains the scientific methods but there is an aspect of connection to the scientific community. I’d argue that if you’re using a company to build and develop a working base of knowledge through the scientific method, you’re failing at the building and organizing knowledge part of that science definition by not sharing what you know.
For sure, and calling Elon a twat would be an insult to twats out there. But saying “if it’s not published it’s not science” to one of the greatest grifters while having to explain the nuance of what you tweeted is a big L in my book.
I don’t particularly agree. Publishing is a tricky thing in the private sector, and we’ve seen a lot of scientific suppression by companies. Peer review literally requires the field to assess your work, and doesn’t end with the publication, but is a process that continues forever. Reproduction is a major issue, especially in fields proximal to mine (neuroscience , Medicine and psychology) and the whole process of open science with this type of review process makes it much easier to create papers that are reproducible.
The external influence is basically a given to produce science that holds up.
I agree though, we can argue open science is much better and more reliable. We can argue privatly conducting a study and doing all the steps that would be conducted by the academic community within one organisation leads to more biased and less reliable results. But it’s still science by its very definition, I’d even argue denying that is a bit disrespectful to all scientists doing so.
Counterpoint: the scientific method is much simpler than you described.
- Fuck around
- Find out
- Write it down
The rest are details of the above or elitism.
I think the sticking point is this: if people can’t reproduce it then you missed writing down an important detail and therefore didn’t finish step 3.
The elitism is thinking peer review suffices for reproducibility.
I agree with you last point, and I really, really want to with the first.
Sometimes science feels more like an art, for chemistry at least. I suppose the counter-point to this is: if you provide sufficient detail to reproduce but your results are still difficult to reproduce reliably by others, then your process wasn’t very robust and should have undergone more development before publishing. Those details may be so minor that you don’t even realize that you overlooked something.
I mean that makes sense. I guess it would be fairer to say that enough should be written down its still usable in tracking down what is missing.
Imo both in the twitter are stupid. Like, no way engaging with musk could go well.
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.yes, but even within those “secret groups”, there are SOP and conventions of intergrity.
Thanks ! … if anyone else wants to know :
SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedure. Within secret scientific research groups, SOPs are established guidelines or instructions for carrying out routine operations to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance with regulations. These SOPs help maintain integrity, confidentiality, and efficiency within the research group.Secret scientific research groups? Lol. Anyone with a passing familiarity with government work knows about SOPs.
GPT told me it was “Standard Operating Procedure” in the context of the previous comment. That wasn enough for me. I didn’t have to know it applies to your job in an English speaking country.
You’re over here asking GPT about “secret scientific research groups” but wanna point out that it’s an English acronym? You could’ve asked Encyclopedia Britannica instead and gotten the right answer.
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…
i agree because what I usually mean when i talk of science is scientific work even if this work doesn’t result in proving that an hypothesis is right so that it becomes a scientific theory.
For me the main criteria is to follow the scientific method.I’d say it’s just research. Science is a group activity by necessity, even if the scientific method is not.
What makes science a group activity by necessity?
Why is one person employing the scientific method to better understand the world around them “not doing science”?
Well, modern science is interdisciplinary, it relies on resource sharing and peer review to reach consensus, which all require many people. In practice, it’s merely research without collaboration if contributions aren’t being made because Science isn’t defined when you apply the scientific method. Science is what we do collectively. So when offshoot research is vetted, it becomes part of the science.
This reminds me of a few people I’ve met who believe themselves to be scientists who claim to do science by themselves, but in reality, it’s numerology nonsense. They’re arguably researching a system they invented but nobody worth their weight would take them seriously.
Why is one person employing the scientific method to better understand the world around them “not doing science”?
Why is “research” not the appropriate label?
So, first and foremost it is important to recognize we are having a definition argument. The crux of our disagreement is over the definition of “science,” specifically as it relates to the act of doing it.
Now, obviously anyone can claim that any word means anything they want. I can claim that the definition of “doing science” is making grilled cheese sandwiches. That doesn’t make it so.
So, as with all arguments over the definition of words, I find appealing to the dictionary a good place to start. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science Which, having read through all the possible definitions, does not seem to carry any connotation of mandatory collaboration.
Now, the dictionary is obviously not the be all and end all. Words have colloquial meanings that are sometimes not captured, or nuance can be lost in transcribing the straight meaning of the word. But I think that the onus is on you to justify why you believe that meaning is lost.
And note, what I’m not arguing is that science isn’t collaborative. Of course it is. There are huge benefits to collaboration, and it is very much the norm. But you have stated an absolute. “Science isn’t science without collaboration.” And that is the crux of our disagreement.
And as to why I wouldn’t just call it “research.” First, I see no reason to. By both my colloquial definition and the one in the dictionary (by my estimation), it is in fact science. But, more importantly, if we take your definition, you are relegating the likes of great scientists like Newton, Cavendish, Mendel, and Killing to the title of mere “researchers.” And I find the idea of calling any of those greats anything short of a scientist absurdly reductive.
I mostly agree with you.
But you have stated an absolute. “Science isn’t science without collaboration.”
I don’t think that’s what I’m saying, at least, that’s not my stance. I’m trying to say that how we formally define Science is one thing. But in practice, Science can only be collaborative because of the complexity of topics, the nuance that needs to be captured in experimental design, and the human error that needs to be avoided. There’s also the connotation that science is the collective body beyond its works that encompasses a community, a culture, a history, a way of thinking, and so on. If you’re “doing science”, then we have the mutual understanding that you’re participating in all of the above, because otherwise, you’re just conducting independent research that could eventually find its way into the whole.
But if it doesn’t ever find its way into the greater body of science, how can we label that as doing science if it hasn’t made an impact besides personal profits? And even if those findings work as advertised in a product, how do we know that the hand-waiving explanation in this black box isn’t true? It does nothing for our understanding. I won’t argue that it works as a colloquial term because a theory could mean whatever possibility popped into someone’s head even if it’s wrong. Strictly speaking, a theory is much more than a plausible thought and I think that analogy carries on.
you are relegating the likes of great scientists like Newton, Cavendish, Mendel, and Killing to the title of mere “researchers.”
That’s a relic of what worked back then but their independent research eventually made it into the science, which is consistent with what I’m saying. Labeling them as researchers takes nothing away from their great achievements. I see no issue with calling an apple a fruit when broadly speaking.
If you aren’t saying that “science isn’t science without collaboration,” can you give an example of something that is science without collaboration? I only ask because you state that’s not what you’re saying, but follow it up with what, to my attempt at reading comprehension, is you just restating the thing you said you aren’t saying.
And I would argue science done in secret can have enormous impacts beyond “simply profits.” The Manhattan Project for example. I think it would be absurd to say what was going on there was anything but science, but there was no collaboration with the greater scientific community or intent to share their findings.
And look, of course you can be a researcher without being a scientist. Historians are researchers but not scientists obviously. But when what you are researching is physics and natural sciences, you are a scientist. That’s what the word literally means. When your definition requires you to eliminate Sir Isaac Newton, maybe it’s your definition that’s wrong.
You say you see no problem with calling an apple a fruit when broadly speaking. Neither do I. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be absolutely delusional to insist that an apple wasn’t actually an apple.
Academic Journals frantically spinning up botnets to retweet this
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.
Yann LeCun is a dude
With all these “she” talk in this comment section, I was like when did LeCun change gender?
I don’t even do anything remotely related to AI, but I know LeCun is a dude.
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everything following the scientific method is science
I’m fairly certain “report conclusions” is a pretty big deal in the scientific method. Principle of verifiability and all that.
True a lot of science is done in industry and the corporate world and not published to keep it a trade secret. It is still science but not shared.
There’s no such thing as a scientific method
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
The second, implied part, is that writing it down is for OTHER people to learn from.
So, although I hate the eletist gatekeeping language… I think I agree more with the professional scientist than I do the professional clown.
Corollary: If it can’t be reproduced you’ve failed to write down something critical.
That is to say: it’s fucking around and, if you’re good at it, finding out.
well it still goes back to the original arguement that it has to be published and reproducible.
else it would be forgotten and re-discovered again at a later stage.
some scientific discoveries of the mordern era were actually discovered by earlier ancient people before mordern science started recording such discoveries.
Does it have to be a new discovery to qualify as “science”?
No
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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
Yeah who is Elon? I’ve never heard of him or SpaceX or Tesla. I guess this Musk guy will die in obscurity. Too bad he didn’t publish a paper.
Ideally he can go down in history as the 21st century version of Thomas Eddison.
The guy that bought Lodygin’s patents? Yep.
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.
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.
You were correct in the first, but the things you’re describing are product research and development.
All super important, but not exactly what I call science as a socially beneficial activity humans do specifically to learn the truths of the universe.
Also how transparently published and reproduced was Pfizer’s vaccine trials, considering a judge had to force the contents released, yet it was science right away. You can’t have cake and eat too.
Science is just the process of testing things in the world in a reproducible way.
LeCun’s argument is good career advice (you only get credit for what others know you did), but it’s not factual correct.
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.
It doesn’t need to be published in a scientific journal. Publication in journals is the most streamlined way to go through the process, but you could publish your hypothesis and methodology to a blog and potentially get the same benefits.
Even patents need to be published. Publication is how discoveries are shared and verified.
You would still need to be recognized before someone more recognizable takes it and sticks their name on it the moment they see any validity in it. Plagiarism isn’t a myth, and good luck getting recognition even just for a hypothesis without a master and just as a hobbyist.
Academics want a well prepared research paper without evidencing crude freshman mistakes, and by its nature yours might be far cruder than academic standards. Even if you do end up releasing it and if it does by some miracle get acknowledged, it will by its nature take longer and run more risks from a lack of peer review that might discard it due to simple but correctable mistakes while running the risk of getting it plagiarized by someone capable of fixing it up, and no one is going to take a random blog as the proof of a preexisting theory over a research paper with a name with some masters to it that claims the idea was entirely theirs shortly thereafter. And if all you care about is the study of reality and science, why risk the heartbreak of getting personally involved?
Patents don’t need to be a full comprehensive research pieces, they just have to be enough to define and identify particular intellectual property.
It’s free to publish.
never mind expensive to publish.
Academic world is very not happy about it either. Academic world hates journals publishing corporations.
See lawsuits against ResearchGate, lawsuits against Sci-Hub and lawsuits against many students and academics that shared scientific papers.
There’s private company r&d science and military science as well, even though those aren’t academic science with it’s peer review and publication.
I agree that for it to be science it needs to be reproducible, but obviously publication could happen internally. It just ends up as science that no one else can benefit from, which is contrary to what most scientists actually want.
Musk is just an ass who doesn’t want to share his toys.
how about you figure out how to make a gas pedal that doesn’t try to kill people before you talk shit?
Yann LeCun is not a good person, but at least he’s significantly smarter than Elon
I wish he was even smarter so that he would choose not to play chess with a pigeon.
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.
Fr*nch?!? 🤮
I’m too lazy to edit it, but you get the idea:
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.
