Comment on vibes-based astrophysics

• Zuzak@hexbear.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  But isn’t that the whole reason that the concept was developed in the first place? It’s not very sound to come up with a hypothesis to explain an observation and then rely on that same observation to support the hypothesis. The concept needs to be able to predict and explain new observations, or else it has no utility and is still essentially just a placeholder.

  You talked about, like, “vibes-based reasons,” but is there a reason to accept the explanation of dark matter aside from vibes? If it’s just about feeling satisfied that you have an explanation for the phenomenon, that’s vibes. Like, relativity, you have to accept and account for or GPS wouldn’t work nearly as accurately as they do. But everyone could reject the hypothesis of dark matter and it wouldn’t really change anything.

  Explanations for things are a dime a dozen. There’s no real value in having an explanation (other than personal satisfaction, i.e. vibes) for something unless that explanation helps you to make predictions or manipulate objective reality in some way. That’s not to say that it couldn’t, at some later date, meet those requirements, but at this point dark matter is barely anymore useful than saying a wizard did it - a hypothesis that also explains the observations perfectly well while being only slightly less congruous with the rest of our understanding of physics.

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  • BB84@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The concept needs to be able to predict and explain new observations, or else it has no utility and is still essentially just a placeholder. They first came up with it to explain galactic rotation curves. After that, many new observations came in and the model successfully explained them. To name a few: bullet cluster dynamics, gravitational lensing around galaxies, baryon acoustic oscillation.

    Like, relativity, you have to accept and account for or GPS wouldn’t work nearly as accurately as they do. It is neat that general relativity is used in GNSS, but I’d bet that GNSS could still be invented even if we don’t know general relativity. Engineers would probably have came up with a scheme to empirically calibrate the time dilation effect. It would be harder, but compared to the complexity of GNSS as a whole not that much harder.

    There’s no real value in having an explanation (other than personal satisfaction, i.e. vibes) for something unless that explanation helps you to make predictions or manipulate objective reality in some way. Are you saying there is no value in like >95% of math, astronomy, and probably many other fields of research? That’s a harsh take, but perhaps you’re right.

    At least let me say this: finding explanations to satisfy personal curiosity (doing it for vibes, as you put it) is different from projecting personal feelings onto objective understanding of reality (the vibes-based astrophysics I was referring to in the meme).

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