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  "origin": "https://www.msweet.net/notes/",
  "page": "139-cobalt-finches",
  "author": {
    "name": "Matthew McDowell-Sweet",
    "url": "https://www.msweet.net/"
  },
  "created": "2026-10-27T18:50:05Z",
  "updated": "2026-10-27T18:50:05Z",
  "version": 1,
  "content_md": "[Metascience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metascience) needs to attend to both day and night science.\n\n[Day science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science) is the industrialised academy: reliable, recurring increments of knowledge, delivered via shared norms and established sociotechnical systems. [Night science](https://night-science.org/) is the unlooked-for insight and [serious play](https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/the-curiously-playable-universe) that throws up novel conjectures and, occasionally, paradigm shifts. Done well, they feed each other.\n\nWith AI, there’s a risk we end up in an epistemological Antarctica. *EverDay* looks like success: the pipelines churn, the metrics climb, and the anomalies that might spark something new get smoothed away as noise. *EverNight* is conjecture unmoored from evidence. It runs from [crackpot](https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html) theories and ideas we can’t comprehend, to ones that sound plausible but can’t be [falsified](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability).\n\nPolar seasons, with their months-long days and nights, disorient. Like humans, science needs a circadian rhythm to function, a [tick-tock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick%E2%80%93tock_model) where ideas still answer to evidence and evidence can still surprise us. The task is to find that rhythm while respecting [Sutton’s law](https://msweet.net/notes/138-maroon-hares).",
  "content_html": "<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metascience\">Metascience</a> needs to attend to both day and night science.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science\">Day science</a> is the industrialised academy: reliable, recurring increments of knowledge, delivered via shared norms and established sociotechnical systems. <a href=\"https://night-science.org/\">Night science</a> is the unlooked-for insight and <a href=\"https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/the-curiously-playable-universe\">serious play</a> that throws up novel conjectures and, occasionally, paradigm shifts. Done well, they feed each other.</p>\n<p>With AI, there’s a risk we end up in an epistemological Antarctica. <em>EverDay</em> looks like success: the pipelines churn, the metrics climb, and the anomalies that might spark something new get smoothed away as noise. <em>EverNight</em> is conjecture unmoored from evidence. It runs from <a href=\"https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html\">crackpot</a> theories and ideas we can’t comprehend, to ones that sound plausible but can’t be <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability\">falsified</a>.</p>\n<p>Polar seasons, with their months-long days and nights, disorient. Like humans, science needs a circadian rhythm to function, a <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick%E2%80%93tock_model\">tick-tock</a> where ideas still answer to evidence and evidence can still surprise us. The task is to find that rhythm while respecting <a href=\"https://msweet.net/notes/138-maroon-hares\">Sutton’s law</a>.</p>",
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