I have been reading up on AlphaFold which is an AI tool used to predict folding of known large protein sequences. It is really amazing what has been achieved, with hundreds of millions of folded protein structures predicted in only a couple of years. This is an incredible achievement which will likely facilitate many major advances in biology and healthcare.
Still, I find it depressing to witness the fantastic advances in science and technology currently being made in comparison to the whacky beliefs of so many people who say that they “do my own research” meaning that they do a quick search online or follow chains of algorithmic recommendations to social media videos by influencers – usually people who gain fame by being attractive, making music or being good at sports. Someone who can run fast or does a good job in putting on make-up is not a more reliable source of information about how the world works than professional scientists. We have social media videos of fools saying ‘but if a plane flies in a straight line, then it would fly off the surface of a sphere into space’ and that means only sheeple believe that our world is spherical.
There are many challenges in our increasingly populous world. We will likely never reach the stars, never colonise other worlds. This world is all we have. We will not mitigate our societal problems by believing that all experts are lying to us and that the real truth can only be found on TikTok. Sure, many politicians lie and some ‘scientists’ do too. However there are plenty of trustworthy scientists and experts out there. Let’s value their opinions more than those of some influencer on YouTube who cannot even spell the word vaccine.