A while back, I set myself the project of figuring out how much of the MIT undergrad physics curriculum could be taught from free online books. The answer, so far, is more than I had anticipated but much less than what we deserve. But working on that, along with a few other conversations, has got me to wondering. We’ve seen TESCREAL types be just plain wrong about science many times over the years. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality botches Punnett squares and pretty much everything more advanced than that. LessWrong demonstrably has no filter against old-school math crankery. The (ahem) leading light of “effective accelerationism” just plays Mad Libs with physics words. Yudkowsky’s declarations about organic chemistry boggle the educated mind. They even manage to be weird about theoretical computer science — what we might call the “lambda calculus is super-Turing!” school of TESCREAL.

Sometimes, the difference between a TESCREAL understanding of science and a legitimate one comes from having studied the subject in a formal way. But not every aspiring autodidact with an interest in molecular biology or the theoretical limits of computation is a lost cause!

So, then: What books come down upon the superficial TESCREAL version of cool things like a ton of scientific bricks? What are the texts that one withdraws from an inside coat pocket and slides across the table, saying “This here is the good shit”?

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsMEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    (I’m thinking radiology, although who knows when the bigs news is going to come out that that isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be)

    yes, this is a specific area i have a note to self to look into

    • FRANK.MCCONNEL@fosstodon.org
      0·
      9 months ago

      @dgerard @YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAM About a decade ago I was working with (kinda sorta) a guy who wanted to do a start-em-up that would involve machine recognition of situations from electrocardiograph recordings, in real-time so as to give the cardio outpatient early warning that they should call for help. At that time the buzzword was Machine Learning, but also I looked and found the published research to be voluminous and ongoing for some decades.

    • mountainriver@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      From what I have read, it can be a support as long as:

      • It is trained on local data, from the machine and procedures normally used.
      • The accuracy is regularly tested (because any variation in the indata, whether from equipment or procedures changes the input data).
      • It is understood as a tool that gives suggestions for the radiologist, not a replacement.

      Of course, it cannot be better than the best radiologists around. So the question is if it is worth it, compared with for example hire more staff.