Just how fast can they make such deductions? I don't doubt their mad intellectual skillz, but to learn about the world you need to do experiments. Yes, they can glean far more information than we would from the experiments we've already done, but would it really suffice? Might there not be all sorts of significant effects that we simply have not constructed experiments subtle enough to see? You can come up with many theories about proton decay (or whatever) that are consistent with a given set of results at the granularity the "outsiders" can... (read more)
Just how fast can they make such deductions? I don't doubt their mad intellectual skillz, but to learn about the world you need to do experiments. Yes, they can glean far more information than we would from the experiments we've already done, but would it really suffice? Might there not be all sorts of significant effects that we simply have not constructed experiments subtle enough to see? You can come up with many theories about proton decay (or whatever) that are consistent with a given set of results at the granularity the "outsiders" can... (read more)