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this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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Science Memes
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fucking computer science is going from on par with mathematics to worse than biology
"why do you guys do it that way"
"Look because if we don't sacrifice the goat on Thursday the code breaks, idk what to tell you"
Engineering: We only care if it works, even if it breaks math/physics/chemistry/biology.
You can bother figuring out why. Or I might be forced to in order to iterate…
The failure rate falls within the tolerances
And the tolerances are set so big that the failures are covered.
I'm a chemist, I just gave a class to students today. The main topic of the whole lesson was this: we have all these theories and methodologies, we are not going to study how they work and how to use them, let's discuss now all the limitations they have and when they do not work.
Former chemistry student here. In chemistry, every single thing you ever do gets multiplied by a ridiculously big number. A few drops of water has 6.02*10^23 molecules in it. So even the tiniest chemical reactions are massive exercises in parallel processing, and measuring in human-scale units means you might miss by a few hexillion in either direction.
Isn't it amazing internal combustion engines...ever work?
This is why engineers are insufferably smug.
For being trained to think within tolerances?
I wish doctors would do the same.
Economics: Our findings are just as rigorous as these other sciences we swear!
I once called economics a pseudoscience in a reddit comment and some libertarian-capitalist type got suuuper butthurt about it.
He said I don't understand the word pseudoscience. I said, "no I understand it just fine. You don't understand economics."
His only response was to call that a "no, you" argument. Dunning-Kruger on full display.
Basic foundational "observations" by Economics aren't based on the Scientific Method.
I wish the Scientific Method didn't have "Method" in the name because while it is a sensible name it also is misleading.
Science is "method agnostic", a new promising method may uncover other methods and theories that totally pull the rug out from under old theories and methods that is a necessary and sometimes brutal aspect to scientific progress.
Economics, because it began and is sustained for the most part as a system of methods searching for justification for their continuation, is largely incapable of undergoing these necessary "method resets" that come periodically in any scientific discipline.
Chemistry can admit that atoms aren't tiny planets with electons orbiting like moons because Chemistry didn't start as the pursuit to find evidence for atoms being like solarsystems and flesh out the theory that atoms are like solarsystems.
Thus no matter if locally good science is being done in economics it is undermined by the uncomfortable need to preserve the survival of the foundatinal contextualizing methods and axioms they invoke implicitly from the truth uncovered, a vice that plagues any human endeavor consciously and subconsciously and not only keeps Economics from being a real science it also largely sucks the oxygen out of the room for actually scientifically rigorous study of these phenomena.
Alchemy is a great analog here to compare Economics too. Alchemists in the pursuit of trying to figure out how to turn things to gold did interact with and in some ways advance chemistry, but alchemy could never divest itself from its own pre-existing beliefs and methods as chemistry discovered more and more of the universe and began to accurately predict more and more of it.
If alchemy was capable discarding old methods to pursue understanding phenomena more lucidly and precisely chemistry would probably be called "alchemy" in english nowadays and alchemy would be called "pseudo-alchemy".
Economics equates to alchemy they express a desire of a system of methods, axioms and explanations to produce a certain end goal and it forms fatal shackles to the follies of the past.
Any time I've attempted to argue for alternative economic paradigms (not just alternative economic systems, but actually rethinking the fundamental assumptions and theories by which we study and attempt to understand economic systems and phenomena), lazy thinkers hit me with the "nuh uh, that's not what [classical economic theory] says! You don't know what you're talking about."
It's a thoughtless appeal to authority lacking any substance. The word for that is "dogma."
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I like the term Scientific filter. Theories get endlessly filtered though experimentation untill we get purer and purer truth.
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Math also fails sometimes, we've had to invent new math along the way because math is always correct only in the given constraints of how we currently understand math. If those constraints are challenged math evolves.
Example, imaginary numbers weren't a thing for a good while and some stuff didn't work correctly. All math stands upon 1+1=2, we don't know if that always holds true, for now we asume it.
There are no correct axioms. You can change the axioms as you wish and make your own math2.0. And you will be able to apply it to things that follow thoose axioms but finding such things that follow them is the only hard part. We define 1+1=2 and that is true because we define it that way. If it does not hold true in any physical or something then it is that you are applying a correct math for a system which doesnt work with that math(i.e, you are the problem for assuming the same axiom is true for the real system)
In fact, the entire foundation of math -- its system of axioms -- has had to be fixed due to contradictions existing in previous iterations. The most well known perhaps being Russell's paradox in naive set theory: "Let X be the set of all sets that do not contain themselves. Does X contain itself?"
In fact, there have been many paradoxes that had to be resolved by the set theory we use today.
Example, imaginary numbers weren’t a thing for a good while and some stuff didn’t work correctly
And here's Lewis Carroll to regale us with a tale that absolutely won't be misunderstood and taken at face value by later generations about how foolish these silly mathematicians are with their wonky numbers.
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Meanwhile the mathematicians who got a bit too close Philosophy are still arguing about which logic to use and if a proof by contradiction is even a proof at all.
Ehh...
Gödel basically showed we can never know which "mathematics" is the "correct one".
"Proven true assuming my axioms are true" is closer to reality.
Exactly.
HERE'S A THEOREM: IF IT'S PROVEN, IT'S TRUE EVERYWHERE, FOREVER
But at the same time, even if it's true everywhere forever, it might still not be provable, because Gödel.
even if it’s true everywhere forever, it might still not be provable, because Gödel.
No. Gödel's completeness theorem says that if something is true in every model of a (first-order) theory, it must be provable. Gödel's incompleteness theorem says that for every sufficiently powerful theory, there exists statements that are true sometimes, and these can't be provable.
The key word is "everywhere".
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Physics: oh, and if you look close enough, it's actually all probability too.
Economics: the law is true as long as people believe it's true.
Kind of like fairies, when you think about it
Or Orks!
Alternatively, with capitalism giving all the power to the richest: “The law is true because I’ll hurt you if you try to defend yourself and I have plenty of class traitors to help me.”
Archaeology rifles through the pockets of other disciplines and takes what it wants
Except the physicists and the chemists would both argue that everything is all about probability
Quantum physics: everything literally is probabilities.
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Psychology furiously staring from the corner but afraid to speak lest it be made to sit at the folding table with Astrology and Tarot readings.
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Social sciences: Mayhaps, but only for very specific conditions once in time
The author's barely disguised ~~fetish~~ preconceived notion
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