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| ▲ | smileysteve 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It sounds a lot like a farmer's almanac... Which are reasonably accurate (ignoring chaos) and practically free (passion work) | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We always think things are unsolveable, and impossible to decipher, right up until we do, in fact, solve them and decipher them. Anything is possible, well, except for getting the next season of Firefly Edit: FTR I think that weather prediction is, indeed, solveable. We just don't have the computing power/algorithms that fully model and calculate the state.. yet | | |
| ▲ | catlifeonmars 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Then I don’t think you fully grasp the nature of weather. Sure, anything is possible, but some things are much more likely than others, and small changes in weather months away is very very far down on the list of things that are likely to be solvable. I’d even hold out hope for another season firefly <3 | | |
| ▲ | Theodores 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I worked in weather for a while and the forecasters might as well have been betting on the horse races, the interpretation of the charts was very much the same psychology. The model did its thing but there was still an aspect of interpretation that was needed to convert data to a story for a few minutes on TV. For longer range forecasting the task was quite easy for the meteorologists, at least for the UK. Storm systems could be tracked from Africa across the Atlantic to North America and back across the Atlantic to the UK. Hence, with some well known phenomena such as that, my meteorologist friends would have a good general idea of what to expect with no model needed, just an understanding of the observations, obsessively followed, with all the enthusiasm of someone that bets on horses. My forecasting friends could tell me what to expect weeks out, however, the exact time the rain would fall or even what day would not be a certain bet, but they were rarely wrong about the overall picture. The atmosphere is far from a closed system, there only has to be one volcano fart somewhere on the planet to throw things out of whack and that is not something that is easy to predict. Predicting how the hard to predict volcano or solar flare affects the weather in a few weeks is beyond what I expect from AI. I am still waiting for e-commerce platforms to be replaced with Blockchain dapps, and I will add AGI weather forecasting to the queue of not going to happen. Imagine if it hallucinates. Will AI put bookmakers out of business? Nope. Same goes with weather. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Thanks for your anecdote, it's valuable when discussing the possibilities to start by saying that it's impossible because you don't know anyone that did it | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 3 days ago | parent [-] | | It's great to see the level of discourse on Hacker News is... insults and pile ons All this "HN is so much better than other Social Media" is thus proved demonstrably false. |
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| ▲ | awesome_dude 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Your response is, that you don't understand, so nobody else should. | | |
| ▲ | catlifeonmars 3 days ago | parent [-] | | That’s not what I said. But ok. Weather systems exhibit chaotic behavior which means that small changes to initial conditions have far reaching effects. This is why even the best weather models are only effective at most a few weeks out. It’s not because we don’t understand how weather works, it’s because the system fundamentally behaves in a way that requires keeping track of many more measurements than is physically possible. It’s precisely because we do understand this phenomenon that we can say with certainty that prediction at those time scales with that accuracy is not possible. There is not some magic formula waiting to be discovered. This isn’t to say that weather prediction can’t improve (e.g I don’t claim we have the best possible weather models now), but that predictions reach an asymptotic limit due to chaos. There are a handful of extremely simple and well understood systems (I would not call weather simple) that also exhibit this kind of behavior: a common example is some sets of initial conditions of a double-jointed pendulum. The physics are very well understood. Another perhaps more famous one is the three body problem. These two both show that even if you have the exact equations of motion, chaotic systems still cannot be perfectly modeled. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > That’s not what I said. But ok. This is what you did say > Then I don’t think you fully grasp the nature of weather. Like - how the fck would you know? Even more so, why the fck does your ignorance and inability to think of possibilities, or fully grasp the nature of anything make you think that that sort of comment is remotely appropriate. You have the uniquely fortunate position to never be able to realise how inept and incompetent you are, but putting that on to other people is definitely only showing everyone your ignorance to the facts of life. And there was no reply - just downvoting people, like a champ... | | |
| ▲ | habinero 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | No. They're correct and you are not. Nothing to do with "inability to think of possibilities", it's impossible because of literal physics. It's like saying perpetual motion machines could exist if we just think outside the box hard enough. No, we don't have them because thermodynamics. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 2 days ago | parent [-] | | No, you're conflating something provable with something that isn't. Chaos theory only describes difficulties, in no circumstance does it describe things as "impossible" If you don't understand the difference between the two terms, that would explain a lot. What it means is that it takes more work (Computational Power) to properly model what's happening. Just because you don't know the answer, doesn't mean there isn't one (as I have repeatedly pointed out). I get it, you think that you already know everything that is to be known, but, the fact of the matter is you don't, nobody does, and pretending that you do is the real problem. | | |
| ▲ | catlifeonmars 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > What it means is that it takes more work (Computational Power) to properly model what's happening. The issue isn’t computation. It’s measurement. It’s not possible to measure all of the factors that go into weather it will rain on a Tuesday at 3 pm 3 months from now (sorry for the terrible pun). It’s small perturbations in initial conditions. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 2 days ago | parent [-] | | You've been wrong about everything else, so why stop there. The models we have are very coarse, and work for 24 hours (kind of, there are still extreme events that are difficult to be accurate about) More sensors are being deployed this very second - which will present a finer grained picture. It's not even at the rocket science part yet | | |
| ▲ | habinero 2 days ago | parent [-] | | No. They are, again, correct. A chaotic system in physics means "a tiny difference in initial conditions leads to large differences in outcome". You cannot measure precisely enough to make a chaotic system predictable, even if the system is entirely deterministic and you understand all the physics involved. It doesn't matter how many decimal places of accuracy you have or how many sensors there are, the error in the next decimal place will matter. Theoretically, I suppose you'd eventually hit quantum effects and the fundamental limits of measurement. But I don't think quantum weather is likely to ever be a thing. Anyways, the classic chaotic system is a double pendulum. If we can't predict the motion of two sticks, we're not predicting the weather lol. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Pile on all you like, but your gross misunderstanding isn't changing the facts. As has been repeatedly pointed out, we have systems now that are accurate for 24 hours into the future, generally accurate for 72 hours, and mostly accurate for 120 hours That's not "impossible because of chaos", that's "actually happening right now" You're saying it cannot get any better, I'm saying it can That's how wrong you are. |
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| ▲ | catlifeonmars 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Your response is you don’t understand it so nobody else should. Ah I see. I misinterpreted the _you_ in this sentence (to mean me). My main points still stand though: 1. weather is well understood to exhibit chaotic behavior (in the technical sense, not the colloquial sense)
2. there is an upper bound to accurate (edit: precise) weather forecasting the farther you predict into the future As an aside, there was no need to get personal. I wasn’t the downvoter but that is very likely why the comment got flagged. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > As an aside, there was no need to get personal. You've done nothing but be personal, complaining that it's being returned is hypocritical. You started making personal comments, not me. > 2. there is an upper bound to accurate (edit: precise) weather forecasting the farther you predict into the future Quick, everyone, halt all the research into weather prediction, we've already found all the answers. There's no need to look any further, none at all. Actual answer: Currently we use a statistical model, that (as I previously pointed out currently degrades after about 3 days into the future) There's absolutely nothing preventing us from making that more accurate, with better models, and algorithms (as I have been saying from the start) I get that you don't have any understanding of the way that human knowledge is acquired, but that's no reason for you to jump on the internet and yell at people who do. (Someone should tell Edison to stop at the 90th attempt of his lightbulb, it's clear that there are no answers to the problem he is faced with) | | |
| ▲ | catlifeonmars 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > You've done nothing but be personal, complaining that it's being returned is hypocritical. You started making personal comments, not me. I’m genuinely sorry you feel that way. It wasn’t my intention. > complaining that it's being returned is hypocritical I was just responding to your complaint about the downvoting. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > I’m genuinely sorry you feel that way. It wasn’t my intention. I really don't think you fully grasp anything at this point in the conversation > Then I don’t think you fully grasp the nature of weather. That aged well. /s | | |
| ▲ | catlifeonmars a day ago | parent [-] | | >> Then I don’t think you fully grasp the nature of weather. Is that what you meant by making it personal? > That aged well. /s It aged perfectly fine. |
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| ▲ | ACCount37 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control." Not something that can be solved just by throwing more AI computation at it though. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > Not something that can be solved just by throwing more AI computation at it though. I said "With the help of AI" no "Solved by AI" The model is complex, and currently takes time on super computers to crunch through the numbers to give us an approximation, but that doesn't mean that it's never going to be fully modelled, or that we won't find a better way of approximating things where the long range forecasts are more accurate. Currently the 24 hour forecast is highly reliable
Three days reliable
Five days is getting there ( it's still subject to change) These things can be solved by throwing lots more compute at them (and the models improved) | | |
| ▲ | ACCount37 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Chaos theory says "nope". It's never going to be fully modelled, straight up. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It's only impossibile until it's not | | |
| ▲ | ACCount37 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Chaos theory. Look. It. Up. Avalanche effect COMPLETELY PREVENTS certain things from being predictable. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 2 days ago | parent [-] | | So, you can yell and scream all you like but everything, and I mean literally everything that we know was once "unknowable" "impossible" "complete chaos" "unpredictable" There is only one thing that a person can never know, and that is the limit of their ignorance and incompetence. | | |
| ▲ | ACCount37 2 days ago | parent [-] | | There are, in fact, things that are "unpredictable" and "complete chaos". You'd know that by now if you weren't so allergic to rectifying your own ignorance. | | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude a day ago | parent [-] | | Then stop reading the current weather forecasts that are already accurate, |
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| ▲ | awesome_dude 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If anyone needs an example of an extremely limited imagination, matched with a strong need to attack anyone that dares to think what could be... then look no further than this guy and this thread. |
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