ORB 01
Added 2025-05-14 00:29:09 +0000 UTC
Comments
I'm glad you're doing this series. Looking forward to reactions!
JeanCliene
2025-05-22 17:01:42 +0000 UTCthe center of the universe is everywhere the center of the OBSERVABLE universe is approxiamtely in your eyeball which happens to be on earth
HAL
2025-05-17 16:32:17 +0000 UTCReply Thank you for your detailed thoughts, this was a fantastic reaction. [sorry for long comment, thought a long reaction deserved one] I particularly found interesting the comments you made that 1) beauty shouldn’t matter if you’re a scientist and you shouldn’t equate rationality to beauty and 2) scientists are lazy, and that the primary benefit of a heliocentric view of the universe vs. the geocentric one wasn’t because it was any more objectively true, but rather because it was more computationally efficient (more practically useful). I think these are interconnected points. When Rafal gives his opinion that “what is rational is beautiful”, we see the spiral of the fibonnaci sequence behind him. My personal interpretation is that in this case, he is equating rational with information compression. Many things we consider beautiful are complex objects whose features can be condensed by simple rules (e.g., the symmetry of a face, the fractal nature of coastlines, minimalist fonts, rhythm in music, the hierarchy and modularity of a well organized filing system). It’s a common belief that our brains, which have limited capacity for storage and computation, are built to reward us for identifying computationally efficient patterns. You also raise the point that many things in nature like sunflower seeds follow fibonacci sequence. I haven’t done the actual math on this, but I believe a common theory of why that is is because it’s the most efficient way to pack seeds in a limited circular space. It makes sense that we’d see the golden ratio a lot in nature, because it ends up being a mathematically optimal pattern that many paths of evolution eventually reaches. I’d imagine this extends past biological evolution. Forms that are beautiful could resistant to entropy (thermodynamic or informational) or more easily replicable (e.g., DNA spirals, self-similar memes). In that sense, trying to rationalize some sort of beauty out of observable phenomena probably can lead to discovery about the order of the universe. On the other hand, just because many things in nature are beautiful doesn’t mean everything has to be so (like you say, sometimes things are just ugly). To bring up a favorite bugaboo of yours, quantum physics don’t map cleanly to human intuition and has probabilistic elements that challenge our assumption of a deterministic universe. As a very mediocre physics student, I personally found that the aesthetics of science peaked with Newton, who described a very understandable universe based on simple rules :D. Einstein, Quantum Physics, String theory, all may be mathematically elegant and closer to some Platonic source code of the universe but don’t map well to the observable world our brains evolved to survive in. In that sense, trying to overfit our observations to some line that is more pleasing to our minds is a cardinal sin and is a sort of madness. I would not go as far as you to say it’s “the worst” mindset to try to seek beauty with science. It’s a bias that can lead people down the wrong path yes. But even if a heliocentric view of the universe isn’t any more true than a geocentric one, it is a model that ended up being more incrementally useful for humans.
Tim Kane
2025-05-14 14:01:52 +0000 UTCIF you love rational people, you will love and hate this show( all in a good way)
Greenstarorange
2025-05-14 13:18:01 +0000 UTCLove to see the depth of discussion. The show is only getting started, so I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't going to be the longest reaction to a single episode, haha. One piece of context could be interesting at this point. "Chi" means Earth/orb, it also means truth and it also means blood. So the title of the show is a pun!
Digit
2025-05-14 01:54:11 +0000 UTCThis show was airing when I discovered your channel. Always thought I’d love to get your thoughts on this show, as it has quite a lot to say not just about astronomy but epistemology and the philosophy of science. Looking forward to hearing your commentary
Tim Kane
2025-05-14 01:20:04 +0000 UTCI am SO looking forward to this one...
Digit
2025-05-14 00:34:08 +0000 UTCNO FING WAY M8 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
daragh faro
2025-05-14 00:29:54 +0000 UTC
