News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Dark Matter May Be Trapped in All the Black Holes by TekMol on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @03:59PM (#14961891)
Exactly.

Scientists: Listen people! We have created models that explain why stuff does what it does! They are so complicated almost nobody can understand them. They involve 4 dimensions, a zoo of particles, randomness in everything and no reality independent of the observer. And they conflict. But at least they explain why stuff does what it does!

World: But they make the wrong predictions. Stuff does not behave like that.

Scientist: Oh, no problem. Just imagine there is an invisible force out there that moves stuff around. Imagine most of our universe is made of that invisible stuff. Now back to our awesome models!

Re:Dark Matter May Be Trapped in All the Black Holes by nimih on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @04:17PM (#14962079)
This doesn't strike me as an especially powerful critique, in spite of your provocative language.

We have well understood mathematical models which correctly and accurately predict all physical behavior relevant to our everyday lives, and, further, correctly and accurately predict the majority of our observations of the universe around us, period. As tools for understanding our world, they are incredible achievements.

In spite of us knowing these models to be fundamentally incomplete, we have yet (to my understanding) to perform an experiment on Earth which contradicts them. More to the point, the theory which supersedes them will, by virtue of needing to replicate all experimental results so far, will likely be even more esoteric, complicated, wild, baffling, and impenetrable (and--with any luck--elegant, inspiring, and beautiful).

Re:Dark Matter May Be Trapped in All the Black Holes by ColanR on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @04:32PM (#14962284)
He didn't say it very well, but I think he was getting at the Occams' Razor argument - this seems like an unnecessarily complex set of theories to explain the observed phenomena. (Not that I agree, but I think you missed his point)
Re:Dark Matter May Be Trapped in All the Black Holes by Roujo on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @05:14PM (#14962764)
IMO, Occam's Razor is only meaningful when there are two competing hypothesis, one of which is markedly simpler than the other. Mentioning it in a context of "surely it can't be this complicated" without pointing towards a simpler alternative doesn't strike me as very useful. I know you're not the person who made the original argument, just chiming in on the discussion.
Re:Dark Matter May Be Trapped in All the Black Holes by TekMol on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @04:36PM (#14962341)

    accurately predict all physical behavior
Now you made me curious. What is the non-physical (metaphysical?) behaviour that we cannot predict?
Re:Dark Matter May Be Trapped in All the Black Holes by nimih on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @05:12PM (#14962748)
We cannot, as an example, currently predict the zeroes of the Riemann zeta function.
Re:Dark Matter May Be Trapped in All the Black Holes by TekMol on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @05:38PM (#14963045)
What if we make a robot that dances those zeroes. Then we have unpredictable physical behavior.
Re:Dark Matter May Be Trapped in All the Black Holes by Retra on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @11:54PM (#14965423)
The robot would have to predict those zeroes to 'dance them'.