SCOUT· 64%1h 16m·2026-08-17·Science364 | Stuart Firestein on How Science Relies on Ignorance and Failure
One of the paradoxes of science is that it seeks objectively true understanding of the world, but its methodology is driven by ignorance, failure, and uncertainty. Some phenomena we understand pretty well, but interesting research happens at the boundary of what we do and don't know. And there is no foolproof…
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What people are saying
“This has been a really entertaining YET insightful discussion, it's changed my perspective a bit on a few things. Thank you Sean and Stuart!”
“1:08:05 "Islands of predicability" - parallels with Wolfram's hobby-horse of the ubiquity of "computational irreducibility" and occasional "pockets of computational reducibility"”
“You can tell someone hasn't buried a body when they say "dig an eight foot deep hole"”
“57:05 Does anyone know the name of the fallacy? I was thinking maybe it should be Occam's Wager. Lol”
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