When you hear the phrase, “Science is socially constructed,” what does that mean to you? If you are a philosopher of science, you likely have a deep and nuanced understanding of exactly what that means. Unfortunately, in my experience, many scientists and science communicators do not fully appreciate what it means, and may even have severe misconceptions about it. I am not a philosopher, but I have studied a lot of philosophy and always try to align my understanding with the experts. I also have an interest in many different sciences, which I think is extremely helpful in understanding the socially constructed nature of science.

Let me first say what is not meant by that phrase – it does not mean that science is not real, that the findings of science are not true in some meaningful way, or that all methods of understanding the universe are equivalent. This is not relativism or post-modernism.

What it does mean is that science is something that people do. That may seem obvious, even trivial, but often people speak of “science” as if it is an entity unto itself. I know that we often use shorthand for convenience, but it is good to occasionally think about how that shorthand may bias how we think about things, and reflect those biases. When people say things like, “listen to the science” it makes it seem as if “science” is something that can speak with its own voice. It isn’t. Similarly someone might say, “look at the facts” as if the facts can interpret themselves. They can’t. People are always in the loop. People actively construct science out of observations and hypotheses and theories. There are institutions of science, different cultures within science, and different perspectives.

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For many science fiction fans the computer voice on the Enterprise is iconic, and is, in fact, “the” voice of any computer. Majel Barrett deliberately gave the computer a stilted, monotone, mechanical voice to reflect the fact that it was a non-sentient machine. But also, it reflected the technology at the time. Voice synthesizers had been around since the VODER, first debuted at the 1939 World’s Fair. They produce an electronic-sounding definitely artificial voice. Many people are also familiar with this electronic voice through Stephen Hawking’s voice synthesizer.

But now we have the technology to create artificial speech that sounds convincingly human – the voice sounds natural and not electronic and contains all the inflection and nuance of natural speech. Sesame is one example, and you can try the demo for yourself. The app adds pauses, breaths, “ums”, and other fillers to sound more natural. Essentially it is now simply not possible to tell an AI generated voice from a human generated voice. I recently rewatched Star Trek TOS and paid close attention to the futurism in the series and was struck by how dated all concepts of AI were in the show. We can already produce natural-sounding human speech, so why is the Enterprise’s computer so mechanical 200 years in the future?

However – there is another explanation (this is obviously a retcon having nothing to do with the original intent of the creators). More recently it occurred to me that we might consider the mechanical nature of the computer voice a deliberate feature, not a bug of technological limitations. In the episode Tomorrow is Yesterday the ship’s computer had recently been overhauled on Cygnet XIV and was given a female personality with a more natural sounding (albeit humorously annoying) voice. We can therefore say that the technology existed and the mechanical voice was at least partly a deliberate choice. At this point you are probably thinking, “So what?”

Well, one of the features of LLM-based chatbots is that they are getting increasingly good at imitating human interactions through language, whether with text or speech. This creates the powerful illusion that they are sentient and feeling, when they clearly are not. I know this point can be debated – how can we be sure they are not sentient? I maintain they are simply not built to be sentient. As an example, the same technology can be used to make pictures, but no one argues that Midjourney is sentient. So for the sake of discussion let’s stipulate LLMs are not sentient.  Continue Reading »

Solar power as a source of electricity has been on a meteoric rise, and has crossed some encouraging milestone recently. Every way you look at it, solar is booming. This is driven primarily by the decrease in the cost of adding solar power, so let’s start there.

The Berkley Lab has been tracking the cost of solar power in the US for years, so they are a reliable source of information. They get direct data from the actual price paid by consumers, and break down the cost of panels, the cost of installation, and all the “soft” costs that  are part of the industry. In 2009 the total cost of installing solar between $7 – 8.70 per watt. An average US residential home installs a 6-8 kW system, with the average increasing over the years. In 2025 the average size was 7.7 kW. Let’s use a 7 kW system, at $8 per watt, that’s $56,000 total installation cost. Today the average price of installed residential solar in the US is $3.6 per watt (but it is $3.0 if you pay upfront, $4.50 if you finance). So that same 7 kW system now costs $25,200. (If you pay for it outright, the cost drops to $21,000.) So over the last two decades the total const of installed residential solar has dropped by about 60%. This is without considering any tax breaks or incentives.

The reason for the decrease is partly that solar panels themselves are cheaper, and they are more efficient, so a 7kW system requires fewer panels. Installation costs have decreased by about 50% over this time, largely due to economies of scale. However, the US still has higher soft costs for solar than many other industrialized nations, and this is mostly a matter of the regulatory system. So there is some regulatory efficiency to be gained. Solar companies themselves also have some possible efficiency gains. Fortunately, the net price for solar continues to go down, with another 50-60% decrease in total price possible even without further technology gains. Commercial and grid scale solar is even cheaper – with large non-residential installations down to $2.4 per watt.

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