I thought a "prediction" was something about the future. But Darwin, if I understand correctly, classified the plant as carnivorous. As it is the title makes you think the plant turned carnivorous since Darwin made his prediction; and make you think Darwin said "This plant will soon become carnivore". But what happened is that his statement has been confirmed, not that the plant changed.
>In 1875, Charles Darwin posited that some species from the genus Saxifraga—a group of flowering plants typically found in alpine environments—may be carnivorous because of their sticky glandular hairs, which can trap insects. However, there has been a lack of conclusive evidence to support this hypothesis.
Can you clarify how you got "But Darwin, if I understand correctly, classified the plant as carnivorous" out of that? Because it sounds like Darwin observed that there existed this feature on the plants that appeared adapted to carnivorous behavior, but didn't actually observe it in action (and of course he didn't have isotopic tracking to provide hard proof of molecular absorption either). So it was a hypothesis based on feature observation, and now someone has gotten around to proving that as fact via experiment. Not something radically new in terms of technique sure, could have been proved long ago in principle (this sort of tracking was core to what settled the original DNA/protein genetics debates), but still fun to read about and nice to see more getting learned about the species in our world.
Something else to think about, if some potentiating invention would have taken place a few decades earlier, it would have been quite likely that by 1875 there would have been effective isotope analyses available.
Also the further back you go into the 19th century, the more likely it is that the potentiating invention would be completely unrelated to nuclear chemistry.
Regardless, that same potentiating invention (whatever it is) is surely responsible by now for a whole lot more things other than nuclear science.
In addition to your example, there has been a pretty continuous supply of "predictions" that Einstein made that later proved correct when experiments were run.
When I read the first part of Origin of Species, Darwin made predictions where, I thought, "oh, that's just genetics and DNA." (Of course, he didn't know at the time.)
As siblings have said, Prediction is not only about the future. For examples, see ML frameworks (sklearn comes to mind) where the inference method after training a classifier is called ‘predict.’
In science, a ‘prediction’ has special status because it can lend credence to a hypothesis if its implications (predictions) are borne out.
If it’s about the future, the precise verb is ‘forecast.’
I think the traditional scientific use is still future-oriented. The hypothesis-as-prediction is a forecast about the result of an implied, future test.
I'd argue that stats/probability folks pervert "prediction" by using it in contexts of mere information masking, stripping away the tense. There are many better words for this: speculate, extrapolate, estimate, infer, ...
I think in normal English of the public at large and lay people, "predict" and "forecast" have nearly the same meaning as speculation about a future outcome. The main difference is that we "predict" discrete outcomes while we "forecast" statistical outcomes.
That's a fine interpretation but it's not in complete alignment with common usage and understanding of these terms. You can define terms however you like to draw whatever conclusion you like. But they won't last long outside of a vacuum.
> I thought a "prediction" was something about the future
Yes, but that doesn't mean that the thing predicted itself belongs to the future. Historical linguists predicted the existence of ancient languages with specific features (glottals) and then found one.
I remember when "Your Inner Fish" was popular 15-ish years ago, I was introduced to the idea of evolutionary prediction. Something like tiktaalik fossils were hypothesized to exist, with certain features, in a particular part of northern Canada, in rocks of a certain age, etc.
Darwin probably didn’t know this exact species but only other species of the same family and predicted that there are/were some members of the family that are carnivorous
Probably. Is a genus with a lot of species from rocky places. There are several native species of "Stone Breakers" in UK, generally with lots of small white flowers, sometimes purple pink or yellow.
Prediction is an appropriate word to use when you are stating something you believe to be true about something unknown.
'The sun will rise tomorrow' is a pretty weak prediction, but we don't truly know that the sun will rise tomorrow. However, we can be pretty sure it will based on probability, history, likelihood, from our own past observations. You wouldn't need much convincing to believe the prediction.
'The sun will not rise tomorrow' is a much stronger prediction, because it's a 'wilder' less believable claim with very huge impact. Nobody would believe the statement without proof.
A hypothesis, is a testable statement about a predicted outcome. You could hypothesize something like: 'The Earth's core will stop due to XYZ event, which will stop Earth's rotation. The sun will not rise tomorrow.' Then you go about designing experiments (or you observe and show something that is measurable, like some asteroid on a path close to Earth's) to prove the statement.
From the article: 'Charles Darwin posited that some species from the genus Saxifraga—a group of flowering plants typically found in alpine environments—may be carnivorous because of their sticky glandular hairs, which can trap insects'.
'Posited' is to suggest, assume, or put forward an idea, theory, or fact as a foundational basis for an argument or investigation. 'Posited' isn't quite as strong as the word prediction, it's more like a sensible suggestion for further study. Darwin had observed carnivorous behavior in other plants with sticky hairs, and suggested the behavior may be observed in another plant as well.
He didn't make a strong claim like: 'The genus Saxifraga plants are carnivorous because they have sticky hairs that trap insects.' This sort of claim suggests that plants with sticky hairs always trap insects for nutrients, and frankly, he couldn't know that's true without observing every plant with sticky hairs.
What if there are plants with sticky hairs that use the stickiness as a defensive measure instead?
Should the article have used a different word than 'predicted'? Probably, but it wouldn't attract as many viewers, and 'predicted' sort of lends Darwin deserved credibility.
It is in fact correct. The correct word in re some fact claim is "speculate" or "conjecture". We predict that future observation will confirm the speculation. Tense matters.
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Seems the prediction was not that the plants would somehow evolve to become carnivorous, but that the humans would later categorize them as carnivorous?
So predicting human activity rather than future evolution.
No, I don't know what I mean. And I don't think you understand what TFA is talking about:
> Since 1967, teachers could only physically intervene with students if their safety or that of others was at risk. Starting in August 2027, they will be allowed to 'hold a student, keep them in place, or take them to another room' if the student disrupts the class.
Eddie: Oh, and if Tom or anyone else for that matter feels like givin' them a bit of a kickin', I'm sure it won't do any harm.
Soap: Yeah, little bit of pain never hurt anybody. If you know what I mean. Also, I think knives are a good idea. Big, ****-off shiny ones. Ones that look like they could skin a crocodile. Knives are good, because they don't make any noise, and the less noise they make, the more likely we are to use them. Shit 'em right up. Makes it look like we're serious. Guns for show, knives for a pro.
Tom: Soap, is there something we should know about you?
Bacon: I'm not sure what's more worrying. The job or your past.
I just recommended lena [0], a short story from the same author, to a friend.
I really liked it. He liked it too. I recommend looking around on that website a bit.
> Google promised 10 years of updates for all Chromebooks, and it’s now breaking that promise for anyone buying a Chromebook between now and whenever the last Chromebook rolls off the production line
So, they're changing the promise from now on, and not breaking it for past users. Doesn't sound like they're breaking their promise to me.
One small correction: Andrej Karpathy coined the term "vibe coding" in February 2025, a year after leaving OpenAI for the second time. He joined Anthropic in May 2026.
Memoization trades compute time for memory: you reduce CPU cost by 90% _at the cost_ of some memory. The author measured one, but it doesn't look like they measured the other.
It's an important detail to take into account. I'm sure this optimization makes sense, and the size of additional memory is not that big, but I believe it's good to "measure, not assume" as some load bearing model might say.
One of my favourite jokes: 93 % of statistics are made up on the spot, and 61 % of people believe them.
Bonus points for changing the figures every time you retell the joke.
I’d recommend reading “How to make the world count” instead of a work of a morally bankrupt guy who used the very same tricks he criticized to discredit the cancer studies of tobacco usage.
Yes, but less pithy. Placing the "average person" next to the "average number of legs" makes it clear that the idiomatic and intuitive sense of "average" that most people have is wrong. The more precise "typical person" doesn't make that same point as well, though an intelligent reader would certainly be expected to be able to read the same from it.
You _have_ to change the numbers each time, because you're constantly measuring and these things have basic variation. It would be unrealistic if the fake statistics were the same every time!
> the quote popularized by Mark Twain "Lies, damned lies, and statistics"
I’m increasingly convinced this is a thought-terminating cliche. Understanding the difference between a median, mean and mode is fundamentally empowering. Enough people, however, will stop themselves from trying to understand that by quoting such a joke.
Its more a foreshadowing of Simpson's paradox and a cluster of similarly counterintuitive effects. Statistical evidence that is technically of high quality can cause decision makers to believe the exact opposite of what is true.
> Statistical evidence that is technically of high quality can cause decision makers to believe the exact opposite of what is true
High-quality statistics allow themselves to be inspected. When a statistic is being passed around unadorned, particularly with a call to action, that’s no different from an uncited fact being accepted at face value. (Most of the complexity of statistics is in sampling. Most of the errors in statistical judgment tend to come down to misunderstanding how a sample’s statistics translate to the population you actually care about.)
