Stop Calling the Babylonians Scientists (2016)

In some sense, the current trend of chasing quick predictions at cost of giving up on understanding of the inner working of things resembles the described in the article approach that was taken by Babylonians.

A lot of resources is being put into machine learning, as it provides relatively quick solutions that delivers results that are superior in comparison to other approaches for many of problems. And I find it to be fascinating. However, I'm concerned a little about a possible paradigm shift that can happen if we continue to grow this "prediction-first" attitude and let it become a part of our scientific philosophy.

Such a shift might make people who actually try to figure out the underlying mechanics of the problems they work on to be perceived as "inefficient", as they are going to be (and often already are) inherently less competitive to machine learning algorithms in terms of ability to quickly provide predictions that are good enough to be practically used. If it happen, it probably would make the areas of science that involve building and invalidation of theories less attractive to youth in comparison to those that are centered around building better predictive models and application of them to complex phenomena with a focus on making practically useful predictions.

I see the culture in this type of future as something similar to Babylonian culture as it was presented in the article and compared to the Ancient Greek culture. No to say that this future looks completely bad, but I think it is not as exciting as the one where true understanding of the things is valued first if not the most.