[HN Gopher] AI Risks "Hypernormal" Science
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AI Risks "Hypernormal" Science
Author : mailyk
Score : 48 points
Date : 2026-03-23 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.asimov.press)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.asimov.press)
| vivid242 wrote:
| I wasn't aware of the map empire, thank you!
|
| Taking away some complexity comes at a price, and for some
| people, it's hard to see that it outweighs the practicality.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Reminds me of the coastline paradox -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
| boulos wrote:
| Please don't editorialize titles unless they're clearly
| clickbait.
|
| "Designing AI for Disruptive Science" is a bit market-ey, but "AI
| Risks 'Hypernormal' Science" is just a trimmed section heading
| "Current AI Training Risks Hypernormal Science".
| bananaflag wrote:
| I find it funny how people are so concerned that AI cannot
| innovate, that AI coding agents only give the most bland
| solutions to any problem etc. when the next step in OpenAI's 5
| stages to AGI is literally called "Innovators".
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's marketing.
| munk-a wrote:
| Do you mean to say my current AI workflow doesn't involve
| secret agents running around Bond-style sabotaging those
| that'd impede my efforts to build a super secret RSS
| forwarder that pig-lantinifies the text before sending it to
| my client?
| thegrim33 wrote:
| My two step plan is to go to sleep and then wake up the next
| day and be a billionaire. Surely because that's my stated next
| step that means when I wake up tomorrow I'll be rich.
| jacquesm wrote:
| At no risk to myself I will try your plan and if it doesn't
| work you owe me _your_ billion.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The article presumes that the models we have today describing
| everything could still be subject to a major paradigm shift.
|
| Maybe they could be, but it seems pretty unlikely. The edges of a
| lot of scientific understanding are now past practical
| applicability. The edges are essentially models of things
| impossible to test. In fact, relativity was only recently fully
| backed up with experimental data.
| tech_ken wrote:
| I don't think paradigm shifts have to be 'better' in some
| march-toward-progress sense, they can be lateral or even
| regressive in that way and still lead to longer-horizon
| improvements.
|
| I think also what's practically applicable changes constantly.
| Perhaps we're truly at the End of Science, but empirically
| we've been wrong every other time we've said that. My money is
| that there's more race to run.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > I don't think paradigm shifts have to be 'better'
|
| But they do. Paradigm shifts happen because the new paradigm
| explains the unexplained and importantly also covers the old
| model. If prior data is unexplained with a paradigm shift,
| the shift will never be adopted.
|
| > Perhaps we're truly at the End of Science
|
| Who said that? Just because the core of our current models
| seem pretty rock steady doesn't mean there's not more
| science. It simply means that we can mostly just expect
| refining rather than radical discovery.
|
| There will be sub-paradigm shifts, but there's likely not
| going to be major "relativity" moments from here on out.
| paganel wrote:
| > It simply means that we can mostly just expect refining
| rather
|
| The practical issue is if there will enough funds for just
| "refining", instead of "paradigm shifts", which I
| understand as new and "exciting" discoveries. I'm not a
| scientist, of course, this is just my layman's
| understanding.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| Physics is a bit of a special case. This certainly doesn't
| apply to, say, biology, medicine, cognition, not to mention any
| of the social sciences--i.e. _most_ research.
|
| I'm also a little skeptical about the _practical value_ of the
| bleeding edge of both experimental and theoretical physics.
| Interesting? Sure.
| cogman10 wrote:
| cognition is just a special case of medicine which is a
| special case of biology which is a special case of chemistry
| which is a special case of physics.
|
| And the closer you get to physics, the less likely any sort
| of major paradigm shift will be discovered (though the
| article focuses pretty heavily on physics which is why I do
| as well).
|
| But even in those fields, there are core parts that aren't
| likely to ever see any sort of paradigm shift. For example,
| in biology, I doubt we'll see a shift from evolution as it'll
| be impossible for a new model to also explain what evolution
| does.
|
| I agree that at the edges you'll possibly see more paradigm
| shifts and discovery, but those are all going to be working
| from things that will not see paradigm shifts. For example,
| biology can't escape things like single celled organisms made
| up from atoms and chemical compounds.
|
| But ultimately, what I disagree with in the article is the
| notion that discovery won't ultimately be a process of
| hypernormalization. In medicine, we are unlikely to see a new
| paradigm that isn't germ theory. When it comes to the
| research, it'll mostly be focused on finding new compounds
| and delivery mechanisms for treatment rather than finding a
| new paradigm for how to treat a disease.
|
| The softer sciences are the only place where you might find
| new paradigms, but that's simply because the data itself is
| so squishy and poor anyways that it's easy to shift around.
| There it's less a question of the science and more of the
| utility of the model (regardless of whether or not it aligns
| with reality).
| realityfactchex wrote:
| > article presumes ... everything could still be subject to a
| major paradigm shift. ...seems pretty unlikely
|
| Alternatively: there's plenty of mainstream, accepted science
| that's plain, flat out, provably wrong. Yet, it is against good
| taste (job security, people's feelings, status quo bias, etc.)
| to point this out.
|
| Hence, it can actually be tricky to catch wind of, or get a
| grasp on, such issues to begin with, much less pursue such
| issues toward meaningful, published, recognized change in
| understanding (that is to say: paradigm shift).
|
| I'd name some examples, but you wouldn't believe me.
|
| With respect to the article, it seems the current LLMs can
| (though, obviously, do not necessarily have to) return text
| that appears to reason (pretty reasonably!) about paradigm
| shifts, when given the context required and nudged quite
| forcefully toward particular directions. But, as the article
| seems to indicate, the LLMs seem to not tend toward finding,
| investigating, and reporting on paradigm shifts all on their
| own very much. (But maybe part of that is intrinsic to how they
| are programmed and/or their context?)
| cogman10 wrote:
| > there's plenty of mainstream, accepted science that's
| plain, flat out, provably wrong. Yet, it is against good
| taste (read: job security, people's feelings, etc.) to point
| this out.
|
| I highly doubt that.
|
| There are a lot of people that think they've proving the
| mainstream wrong. But more often than not, it's cranks using
| bad non-repeated tests. These bad tests are propped up,
| ironically, because of people's feelings and job security
| more than a built up body of evidence.
|
| They also almost always have to ignore the mainstream body of
| evidence and just say it's wrong and bad because of a
| conspiracy.
|
| For example, plenty of creationists believe they have
| irrefutable evidence that evolution is provably wrong. It's
| usually a few cherry picked or poorly interpreted results or
| sometimes just flat out lying. And often they simply flat out
| lie about the existing body of evidence that support
| evolution.
|
| Another example is the antivaxx movement. Wakefield and RFK
| both built careers that made them a lot of money talking
| about how the mainstream was wrong. Even when the industry
| adopted some of the recommendations (abandoning Thimerosal),
| they simply ignored the fact that further data didn't support
| their claims.
| worik wrote:
| > ... there's plenty of mainstream, accepted science that's
| plain, flat out, provably wrong : : > I'd name some examples,
| but you wouldn't believe me.
|
| I probably would not. You would probably be wrong
| tech_ken wrote:
| My hot take is that mathematical and scientific 'soundness' is
| ultimately more of an aesthetic preference than an objective
| quality of reality. Good science makes sense to humans, and 'what
| makes sense' is ultimately what fits satisfyingly in your brain.
| There's nothing inherently wrong with an enormous epicycle model
| of reality from the perspective of the God of Math; so long as
| your formal system is consistent and expressive enough to
| represent everything then meh, it's a model. But the model that
| humans want to elevate to canonical status has far stricter
| requirements, and ultimately it's the one which the majority of
| sufficiently credentialed tastemakers decide is 'best'. Parsimony
| works well in physics where you have closed form expressions for
| all your stuff, but the biology cases are so much messier because
| it turns out that sometimes reality isn't parsimonious. All this
| to say that good science is a matter of taste, and while AI can
| gist the broad strokes of taste I've yet to see it take on the
| role of genuine tastemaker.
| genxy wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Variations_on_a_Proof
| tim333 wrote:
| >...nothing inherently wrong with an enormous epicycle model of
| reality...
|
| That would be pretty hopeless for launching satellites and the
| like.
| tech_ken wrote:
| What use does the God of Math have for satellites and the
| like?
| card_zero wrote:
| If biology, or some other subject area, is inherently,
| irredeemably hard to explain, and always will be, then I don't
| care about it much, because it doesn't mean very much. I care
| about explanations, not "reality" in the sense of every
| arbitrary muddle of knotted nerve fibers and confused flour
| beetles. If all the world's messy, inexplicable things were to
| gang up and cause us trouble such that we have to pay them
| attention, we can still ultimately deal with them _in the ways
| that matter_ by using clarity and the things we can explain
| well.
| ArRENCEAI wrote:
| What's more alarming isn't that AI is limited to existing domain
| data, it's that when people push it to deviate outside those
| known data points it confidently hallucinates nonsense.
| duskwuff wrote:
| _So much_ nonsense.
|
| If I had a nickel for every AI-poisoned "researcher" I'd seen
| with a preprint full of nonsense buzzwords like "quantum
| fractal holographic resonance matrix"... well, I wouldn't be
| rich, but I'd probably at least have enough to buy a coffee.
| underlipton wrote:
| And many of today's publicly-accessible platforms are designed
| to steer results away from nonsense back to... too much sense.
| "Hypernormal" is a good word for it. I've spent a lot of time
| prompt-yelling, "Please make something as weird as I'm
| imagining, stop veering back to what normal people want to
| see/read."
| piker wrote:
| I got stuck for a minute on the caption "Harry Beck's 1933 map of
| the London Underground" to:
| https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!VsWm!,f_auto,q_auto:...
|
| which contains Heathrow Terminals 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 on the Picadilly
| line. For about 15 seconds I imagined a world where Heathrow has
| had 5 terminals since 1933, then I read the map itself:
| "Recreated by Arthurs D". Phew.
|
| Awesome example of improving information conveyance through
| abstractions though!
| drtgh wrote:
| > AI could repeat this pattern at a larger scale -- generating
| faster results within the existing paradigm, while the structural
| conditions for disruptive science remain unchanged or worsen.
|
| Worsen. LLMs discard/loses and mixes data on their statistical
| "compression" to create their vectorial database model. Across
| the time, successive feed back will be homologous to create a jpg
| image sourcing a jpg image that was created from another jpg
| image, through this "gaussian" loop.
|
| Those faster (but worst) results will degrade real valuable data
| and science at a speed/rate that will statistically discard good
| done science on a regular basis, systematically.
|
| IMHO.
| bibimsz wrote:
| The piano accompaniment and human narration are a nice touch.
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