@naiivememe Think about comparing macbook neo (a18 pro) vs. iPad Pro(m5). Hardware vision in Apple is light-years ahead than software. That's why hardware VP will become Apple CEO.
When Copernicus proposed heliocentrism in 1543, it was actually less accurate than Ptolemy's geocentric model - a system refined over 1,400 years with epicycles precisely tuned to match observed planetary positions.
It took another 70 years before Kepler, working from Tycho Brahe's unprecedentedly precise observations, replaced Copernicus’s circles with ellipses - finally making heliocentrism empirically superior.
Terence Tao's point is that science needs a high temperature setting. If we only fund and follow what's most state of the art today, we kill the ideas that might need decades of work to surpass some overall plateau.
@jeffreyjhardy@theepicmap It's not Byzantine Empire, there's no such thing. It's Roman Empire. Constantinople's former name was Byzantium City. They were Megara People. After Constantin I (roman emperor) city had been called Constantinople.