Probing unknown unknowns: A new generation of telescopes | Hacker News Reader

Probing unknown unknowns: A new generation of telescopes

mappingignorance.org

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Here's hoping LLMs stick to the naming trend used for telescopes like the ELT:

• Large Telescopes → Large Language Models (LLM): Solid start, foundational capabilities.

• Large Telescope (VLT) → Very Large Language Models (VLLM): Major upgrade in size and skills.

• Giant Telescopes → Giant Language Models (GLM): Multimodal, smarter and more specialized.

• Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) → Extremely Large Language Models (ELLM): Expert-level, cross-domain.

• Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) → Overwhelmingly Large Language Model (OWLLM): Theoretical AGI, huge power, ethical dilemmas.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made the famous statement:

"There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know."

I think about this quote often, because of how it was played in the media. "Unknown unknowns" is an obvious and non-controversial idea in technical circles, but it became a popular focus of ridicule, as though he said something moronic. I take it as a reminder to be cautious how I phrase things for a general audience.

when it comes to anything to do with the universe,what could very generously be called the "knowns" ,is still such an improbably tiny part of what we suspect might be out there as to disappear without effect the only realy interesting fact, is that we are not detered by the missmatch at all rock on telescope dudes

> ... will house a mirror the size of four tennis courts...

What's with those "football stadium", "tennis court", etc measurement units?

Is it assumed that everyone knows how much that is? Are they more understandable than giving a number (area) or two (length x width) in SI - or even Imperial - units?

Instead you have to go search for what the size in that particular sport is, so you can get any idea of what they're talking about!

We’re not the demographic they’re looking for.

Funny, but true. This is a puff piece.

Yes and yes. Comparing to a tennis court communicates the scale, not the size, which is more important to the vast majority of readers. It's a big thing, close to very big, but smaller than huge. So for a mirror, it's gigantic.

Does it really make a difference if it's 45x45 or 53x50? If you're trying to imagine roughly what it looks like, no. Their point is that the thing is close to something you could reasonably sort of picture.

I couldn't be less interested in tennis, but I've seen what they're describing at my local park.

Large area measurements don't actually come up all that often for most people in real life so if you say something is 1200 m^2 most people won't have a lot to compare it to.

Maybe they remember the area of their house and that will give them some idea (it is around 9 times the area of my house).

Most people will have a decent idea of the size of a tennis court. Their school likely had one that they would have seen when taking physical education, even if they never actually played. They also show up in movies and TV shows.

Same goes for basketball courts and football fields. They are probably actually better than tennis courts for this because basketball and football are more likely to be televised.

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