This has always been true.

Not really. It's all about models - we have for normal stuff, but it breaks apart in extreme situations

So clearly the model is fundamentally wrong... Which is pretty cool, because it means FTL travel, antigravity, or travel between dimensions could be possible

But we know now normal shit acts - we have models that work perfectly for 99% of all situations, and we're probably not going to stop using them. We understand what happens when you throw an object, and it's a basic equation up until like mock-2 or 3, where our models stop working and we have to switch them out completely

Can you build a model that works for both? Absolutely. It'll be closer to the truth even. But it'll be way more complicated for nearly all practical, human scale situations

At the end of the day, a model that describes reality exactly is almost useless... Without simplifications to ignore everything not relevant, just trying shit live would be easier than calculating the prediction

Yes, yes, I'm quite sure, it's 42!

Thanks for this recommendation! I love books that show me how little I truly know about anything.

Like all of Randall Monroe's books (xckd guy).

Any more book recommendations?

But if I have to then I’ll do it live!

The heliocentric models predicted the orbits worse than epicyclic geocentric ones and that is the reason Galileo was told to shut up, the court transcript is like 99% science and then a single subordinate clause saying "it also contradicts the bible".

Galileo insisted on circular orbits which was his downfall, ironically "because circles are perfect and god would furnish the universe perfect": That kind of religious language while also being worse science than what was already established did him in. Kepler, based on Brahe's data, was the first one to get a heliocentric model right and more accurate than the epicyclic ones.

Also earth doesn't revolve around the sun. If anything both revolve around their shared centre of gravity but really it's a matter of your frame of reference. Paraphrasing Archimedes: Give me a fixed point in the universe and I will move all your models.

I know I'm stupid but how do you see the alt text?

Surely that's "heavy stuff"?

I'm going to take your definition just a step further and say it's a measurement of causality specifically.

A definition I saw recently that I like is that time is the direction of entropy. You follow time one direction and you get the big bang where everything is chaotic and happening, and in the other direction you get the heat death of the universe, where everything has settled into a base state and nothing's happening.

The sad reason for that is that it's a conversation killer. I would love to go back and forth for hours on things like the uncanny similarity between universal gravitation and Coulomb's law. But, when I speak to someone with a similar background to mine it's all...work-work-work-how-is-it-applied??, and when I speak to someone without that background it's all yawns. It's a shame because in either case I think science is the most interesting topic. It's just as edifying to dive casually into the philosophy as it is to dive rigourously into the maths. I learn more per unit time from either type of conversation than from studying papers. And, it's a passion, but one whose expression is stymied either by explaining it in terms of football fields per dolphin or by making it marketable. Interaction with other minds is the most valuable type of learning.
I feel like I may come off as a bit of an elitist writing this, but the problem really is the opposite: I wish more people would get involved!
Edit: the responses to this have made my day you guys. This is why I left Reddit.