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I don’t know anything about physics at that level. Really just the pop science stuff. But I know how people work pretty damn well. I will tell you, right now,

I don’t know anything about physics at that level. Really just the pop science stuff. But I know how people work pretty damn well. I will tell you, right now, with 100% certainty: dark matter is modern witch craft. Bunch of nerds got together and convinced themselves of magical forces that can’t be seen, heard, felt, or touched because their models of the universe don’t work without it. Might be 200 years until we figure it out, but there is an error somewhere and scientists are too proud to admit that they ain’t got a clue. How’d the moon get in the sky? Well I guess someone had to put it up there. How do birds fly? I guess God made them float on account of their lack of sin. Why don’t our models of gravity work? I guess the universe is made up of weird, invisible stuff. Humans don’t like not knowing. So they make wild theories about stuff no one can explain. Someone will come along and figure it out eventually.

exe34 3y ago
The whole point of "dark" in the dark matter and energy cases is to indicate "we don't know." It looks like there needs to be something there for everything to make sense, but we can't see it. Let's try to work out what the properties of the stuff is based on what we can measure and see if anything starts to make sense.
andrewflnr 3y ago
If you know anything about physics at that level, you would know that cosmologists don't like dark matter either. They'd love an alternative but the evidence keeps beating the candidates to death.
- Sysreq2 3y ago
  Aristotle believed that all objects desire to be in their natural state. Throw a rock and it aims to return to the earth. Burn some twigs and the fire eventually stops. And the natural state of any object is at rest. Every piece of evidence for hundreds of years proved this point. Every scientist knew it to be true. And yet I ask you today, does an object in motion desire to rest OR does it stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force? It wasn’t until later that people had the tools to say, hey, wait a minute, this isn’t right. There is more here than we understand. Which of these scenarios seems more likely: 85% of the matter and 95% of the universe is made up of stuff that we can’t detect, doesn’t interact with anything and doesn’t follow the rules of everything else OR there is something going on that we don’t yet understand?
  - andrewflnr 3y ago
    Yeah that's what all the astrophysicists thought too. I didn't know where you're getting the idea that DM doesn't follow the same rules as everything else, though.
    - Sysreq2 3y ago
      My last understanding was that it fell outside the standard model and would require some kind of new elementary particle to explain. It doesn’t interact with light or electromagnetism. The only real basis we have for it is gravitational abnormalities. I guess I have to ask: why do you presume there exists an undetectable force that makes your equations work and not that the equations don’t account for everything? Seems silly. You would never believe 85% of software bugs were caused by unseen, undetectable stochastic physics errors that only manifested as a system crash. The fact that doing the same thing over and over again produces the same result certainly doesn’t cement that theory in my mind.
      - andrewflnr 3y ago
        Oh, by "the rules everything else follows" you didn't mean the basics of quantum mechanics and energy conservation and such, you meant the exact current model of physics that literally everyone with the slightest clue admits is wrong or incomplete. FWIW, the standard model already has plenty of particles that don't interact with EM, so you can't act like that's prima facie unreasonable. The story of the discovery of neutrinos is particularly relevant. Anyway, feel free to read around in this thread for the multiple other lines of evidence that lead to dark matter. Or read the Wikipedia article on it. The information is out there, if you want to know. Or you can keep making up strained analogies involving the number 85%. No one can stop you.
dotnet00 3y ago
Apparently you don't really know how people work after all, if your position relies on a vast conspiracy between thousands of competing scientists around the world over the past 2-3 generations to cover up and deny some mistake, even as they question and test each other's ideas on the daily.
- Sysreq2 3y ago
  Let’s side step for a moment and talk about mythology. People conceptualize it as like Greek gods, Biblical tales, etc. From a sociological stand point however it is much more broad. We engage with mythology every day, we often just don’t know it. When you receive a bill from your power company, it is myth that the company in question is an entity, that your money has value, or even that you must respond. None of these things are objectively true - a power company is not a real thing after all, just something we all made up and agree upon. Myths exist within groups to allow complex functioning and social harmony. They exist to unify and orient. But they are never real no matter how hard you believe. Dark matter, I believe, is one such example. It’s a proxy for lack of knowledge, no different than rain spirits being called to water the crops. It orients and aligns, allows people to continue without the weight of the unknown burdening them. As I stated above, that doesn’t mean fake, or conspiratorial, any more than taxation is a conspiracy to steal your money. These beliefs are just tools we use as humans to lubricate interaction and establish agreed upon norms. Everything from the Law, to Philosophy, to things like Human Rights are mythological. That doesn’t mean they are wrong or immoral, but it doesn’t make them true either. Humans, objectively, only have the rights we communally grant them. When you drive your car you choose to follow the rules of the road. To do otherwise is both foolish and dangerous. We all agree on them and act in accordance. At any moment though, someone could swerve and kill you - even while you sit in your office or walk down the street. We just tend to not think about that unfortunate truth because of the burden it would entail. That is mythology working. It’s doesn’t change reality though.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  I wouldn't go that far, to be honest. They would be much closer to being correct if they were talking about string theory, or the amyloid hypothesis for Alzheimer's.
bigbillheck 3y ago
Katie Mack has a response to this kind of take: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:72bt6fsr5hgnesjtbpuc4av2/bafkreigmc32wdjhia4pwxn35b5xcvbxfttfal5vgzldbcmufgz4iuuviii@jpeg https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:72bt6f...

exe34 3y ago

The whole point of "dark" in the dark matter and energy cases is to indicate "we don't know." It looks like there needs to be something there for everything to make sense, but we can't see it. Let's try to work out what the properties of the stuff is based on what we can measure and see if anything starts to make sense.

andrewflnr 3y ago

If you know anything about physics at that level, you would know that cosmologists don't like dark matter either. They'd love an alternative but the evidence keeps beating the candidates to death.

Sysreq2 3y ago
Aristotle believed that all objects desire to be in their natural state. Throw a rock and it aims to return to the earth. Burn some twigs and the fire eventually stops. And the natural state of any object is at rest. Every piece of evidence for hundreds of years proved this point. Every scientist knew it to be true. And yet I ask you today, does an object in motion desire to rest OR does it stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force? It wasn’t until later that people had the tools to say, hey, wait a minute, this isn’t right. There is more here than we understand. Which of these scenarios seems more likely: 85% of the matter and 95% of the universe is made up of stuff that we can’t detect, doesn’t interact with anything and doesn’t follow the rules of everything else OR there is something going on that we don’t yet understand?
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  Yeah that's what all the astrophysicists thought too. I didn't know where you're getting the idea that DM doesn't follow the same rules as everything else, though.
  - Sysreq2 3y ago
    My last understanding was that it fell outside the standard model and would require some kind of new elementary particle to explain. It doesn’t interact with light or electromagnetism. The only real basis we have for it is gravitational abnormalities. I guess I have to ask: why do you presume there exists an undetectable force that makes your equations work and not that the equations don’t account for everything? Seems silly. You would never believe 85% of software bugs were caused by unseen, undetectable stochastic physics errors that only manifested as a system crash. The fact that doing the same thing over and over again produces the same result certainly doesn’t cement that theory in my mind.
    - andrewflnr 3y ago
      Oh, by "the rules everything else follows" you didn't mean the basics of quantum mechanics and energy conservation and such, you meant the exact current model of physics that literally everyone with the slightest clue admits is wrong or incomplete. FWIW, the standard model already has plenty of particles that don't interact with EM, so you can't act like that's prima facie unreasonable. The story of the discovery of neutrinos is particularly relevant. Anyway, feel free to read around in this thread for the multiple other lines of evidence that lead to dark matter. Or read the Wikipedia article on it. The information is out there, if you want to know. Or you can keep making up strained analogies involving the number 85%. No one can stop you.

dotnet00 3y ago

Apparently you don't really know how people work after all, if your position relies on a vast conspiracy between thousands of competing scientists around the world over the past 2-3 generations to cover up and deny some mistake, even as they question and test each other's ideas on the daily.

Sysreq2 3y ago
Let’s side step for a moment and talk about mythology. People conceptualize it as like Greek gods, Biblical tales, etc. From a sociological stand point however it is much more broad. We engage with mythology every day, we often just don’t know it. When you receive a bill from your power company, it is myth that the company in question is an entity, that your money has value, or even that you must respond. None of these things are objectively true - a power company is not a real thing after all, just something we all made up and agree upon. Myths exist within groups to allow complex functioning and social harmony. They exist to unify and orient. But they are never real no matter how hard you believe. Dark matter, I believe, is one such example. It’s a proxy for lack of knowledge, no different than rain spirits being called to water the crops. It orients and aligns, allows people to continue without the weight of the unknown burdening them. As I stated above, that doesn’t mean fake, or conspiratorial, any more than taxation is a conspiracy to steal your money. These beliefs are just tools we use as humans to lubricate interaction and establish agreed upon norms. Everything from the Law, to Philosophy, to things like Human Rights are mythological. That doesn’t mean they are wrong or immoral, but it doesn’t make them true either. Humans, objectively, only have the rights we communally grant them. When you drive your car you choose to follow the rules of the road. To do otherwise is both foolish and dangerous. We all agree on them and act in accordance. At any moment though, someone could swerve and kill you - even while you sit in your office or walk down the street. We just tend to not think about that unfortunate truth because of the burden it would entail. That is mythology working. It’s doesn’t change reality though.
andrewflnr 3y ago
I wouldn't go that far, to be honest. They would be much closer to being correct if they were talking about string theory, or the amyloid hypothesis for Alzheimer's.

bigbillheck 3y ago

Katie Mack has a response to this kind of take: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:72bt6fsr5hgnesjtbpuc4av2/bafkreigmc32wdjhia4pwxn35b5xcvbxfttfal5vgzldbcmufgz4iuuviii@jpeg https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:72bt6f...