Perhaps, but in terms of getting things done and making progress, it isn't very useful to suppose that it is simply a mystery box and that's that.
Because if we just accept that, what do we do then? We just sit and wait for some new astronomical observation to give us a clue? that could take forever, and we'd be banking that we have the tech to observe this magic hint.
Better to suppose that the theories we have comprise an accurate approximation or partial model of reality, and from there strive to find a better model.
The process of doing so will either refine/entrench our current model and our conviction, or it will result in actually finding a better model. Win-win, and all the while, we can still have our telescopes and detectors on for the magic hint we'd be sat waiting for anyway.
When things break down into singularities, it can be a pretty good indicator that we've got something wrong. Not necessarily, but in this case, I think we missed something.
Sure, I just think it might have a more "boring" answer than people are hoping for. E.g. behind the veil is something extremely high mass and energy, but it's more akin to a new class of Star rather than something where space, time, mass and energy lose all meaning.
I mean based on the well tested theories we have now regarding general relativity… it isn’t just gonna be a new class of star. Unless general relativity is flat wrong, which it isn’t. That isn’t to say general relativity is the end all of our understanding of the universe—black holes are a perfect demonstration of where our understanding breaks down completely. Clearly there is a lot more going on than we currently can explain.
For it to just be a super dense “new class of star” would first require you to explain why general relativity is completely wrong.
And that is the problem. Black holes are weird because they break the well tested equations we currently use to describe what we observe in the universe.
If you want my opinion, figuring this shit out (including what we are calling “dark matter”) is gonna unlock a whole new realm of cool stuff for humanity. I suspect there is a reason why we haven’t solved the Fermi paradox and it is because most “intelligent life”, as we imagine it, is living outside our current understanding of the universe. To get into the “cool aliens club”, our understanding of the universe will need to change.
I think the word "joke" in the context of his interview was more or less intended to mean "bit" or "skit" or "humour-incitement type" -- rather than literally joke as in "knock knock."
I believe he actually said that all humour is passed on, i.e. that all the comic acts that have come along after Laurel and Hardy were in essence re-enacting scenes that they had performed, in another form, prior.
Of course, Laurel and Hardy were brilliant, but it would actually be naive to think that the chain began there. Performed comedy is as old as civilisation itself, and always fluctuates in sophistication/depth relative to the target audience.
Laurel and Hardy represent a talented comedic duo, heavy on physical humour (though not without wit) captured on film so that the physicality of their performance was not up for debate or a supposition, and was available to be absorbed and drawn upon by later comedic performers, and I think this physicality is why Adrian calls back to them. For him, they offer a textbook approach to a broad category of humour.
As for the finitude of humour, I think it would be rather more bizarre if the contrary was true and humour was infinite. Then everything could be funny. Maybe there are a lot of permutations for humour -- if you think about it, the audience (and by extension the time they live in) somewhat dictate what is and isn't funny, and there are considerations as well for cultural context (i.e. JP and CN are going to have a lot of material that will seem nonsensical to a Western audience and vice versa) some humour is obviously universal.
But even to include all topical, regional humour, the number of phrases and physical movements of bodies that can trigger genuine amusement is very likely to be a finite subset of the possible permutations, especially given that all permutations themselves will be finite in total number (there are not an infinite number of words or possible physical occurrences...)
Perhaps indeed there is even a small number of types of humour-incitement, of which all topical, regional jokes are simply manifestations. To group humour-incitement types in this way, Adrian's assertion seems even more acceptable.
He doesn't say Laurel and Hardy invented humour or anything that we could immediately refute. I think he considers their work to be the textbook. Everything you should see before coming up with your own material can be found in their catalogue.
Like all art, grasp the fundaments and figure out which rules you want to subvert to get your message across, for the sake of doing so rather than empty rebellion or feeding reviewers from a marketing perspective.
Sometimes there's no reason to break a rule, and sometimes there's every reason.
As for his fatigue, whether the man has had exposure to humour from other cultures is not clear, but certainly in the context of his own culture I would be inclined to agree. The vast majority of comedy in the West is very obviously recycled material with different packaging. That's not to say that sometimes the later recyclings aren't better than the "originals" —- a lot of it is in the delivery, and if you watch them all without bias (nostalgia) you can probably pick out some cases where a comedy from 2007 is funnier than something conceptually similar from 1987.
A lot of people grew up with comedy shows that were the best of their time and thus become the best for those people, and they watch stuff 20 years later after having rewatched their favourites a dozen times as well and it all seems less novel. Perhaps the same effect occurs for the performers as well as the audience.
Adrian also lost his partner in comedy, the infamous Rik Mayall, and this perhaps soured him on comedy without that second half to bounce off of. They used to tour live and they would often break character and break the fourth wall —- while their long collaboration and friendship would lend a good deal of weight to it, as well as topical spice depending on the region, I think they were keen to do it anyway to keep their material a little fresher and keep things interesting for themselves while doing it. Touring the same act up and down the country would surely be enough to convince anyone it's all been done before. Losing that certainly confines one's repertoire to only the rehearsed material.
I think he's married to Jennifer Saunders (of Absolutely Fabulous and French and Saunders fame) but I don't think they ever collaborated much.
Schadenfreude to the extent of humour. That is a difficulty isn't it, the audience can find whatever it wants funny if that's how it's wired. Perhaps you're right.
It's definitely contextual. As an example, military or veterans, first responders, doctors, lawyers, and others like that will usually have a much greater appreciation for dark humor than people who haven't had to deal with tragic circumstances in their day jobs.
Before: let's commission a designer to make a cool logo / let's make a cool logo.
Now: market research data indicates that 90% of sales went to people who used this font style in their logo so let's commission a designer to make us a logo that looks like everyone else's [1]
[1] with no consideration of the fact that 99% of sellers use that font type in their logo and 85% sales went to market leader who definitely used that font type in their logo, to say nothing of the fact that the logo probably didn't secure the conversion in any cases
The good reason for adding dark matter, that you say is absent, is one that is more a question of philosophy of science, in that adding more mass accounts for the observed behaviours without changing the known laws of physics.
The known laws of physics have been formed on math that checks out and is consistent with all our other observations, and has made many predictions that have checked out and even formed the basis for technology that we use every day.
The way science works is that we form mathematical models of physical behaviour, we test model against real world data, and if the model is consistent with reality, and predicts further behaviours that we then can test for, the theory behind it holds water and we have something to work from.
If you like, you can think of it as building trust in a model, having courage in a theory isn't a mistake, it's how science has been built. Of course finding the errors and new laws is important, but you have to conclusively rule out the established theory first.
This is how we got to Newtonian mechanics instead of firmaments, elements, worlds of forms and mythologies, and how we got to medicine instead of humours, phlegms, biles and alchemy.
Adding mass that can't be seen preserves the body of theory of the standard model and doesn't raise any questions of why GR/QM work correctly for things like GPS etc.
In other words, dark matter is an answer that doesn't require going backwards.
Saying that gravity behaves differently to what we previously thought means that the standard model is only coincidentally right or only right in particular places, and from there where does the scepticism end? Where do you even start unravelling the tapestry?
Think about it in a diagnostic analogy. If your patient is critically ill, and you don't know why, you will prioritise testing for conditions that fit the symptoms and can actually be treated/cured. Because if it isn't treatable, the truth of what caused it isn't that important.
Occam's Razor as an argument against dark matter, but saying that gravity behaves differently — when our theories do not otherwise predict that it should behave differently — is actually less simple than saying there is more mass than can be detected via EM interaction.
The other point I would make is that dark matter can explain most if not all of the otherwise problematic observations, which makes it preferable over modifying the laws of physics, because as I understand it, doing this doesn't account for all of the problematic observations.
Again with an analogy to medicine, it is less likely to be three unrelated, coincidental conditions in one patient than a single condition if both diagnoses explain the same symptoms.
To frame everything I've said in a medical analogy, we have essentially treated for the condition we think it is, and we're trying to figure out why the condition has presented differently to typical cases, rather than ruling out the diagnosis and saying it is something else entirely — because the treatment is working. That is, the empirical evidence we have suggests that our diagnosis is correct, but we don't know everything there is to know about the condition.
Our GPS works, gravitational lensing has been observed, gravitational waves have been detected, we power our homes with nuclear reactors, we calibrate our most accurate clocks based on quantum mechanics, and so on. Particles we then predicted would exist have since been detected.
The patient had a fever. We treated the patient with antibiotics, and they got better, so we have reason to believe it's a bacterial infection — we just can't see the bacteria in the blood work. So the next logical step is to think of what presents and responds like a bacterial infection but isn't bacterial, or otherwise speculate that we have discovered something that does this, rather than question whether we understand the human body or whether thermometers work.
If in trying to confirm this discovery, we find that actually we don't really understand the human body or that our instruments are broken, that's when we should start looking to re-assess the laws of physics.
The standard model has no useful purpose if we don't place some trust in it to find new things. If we threw out our scientific models every time we encountered something we weren't expecting, we wouldn't make any progress at all.
The only reason dark matter raises so many eyebrows is (a) the popular press just loves to pick at it because it's an easy target with great headlining when your scientists are saying the majority of the universe is "missing"; and (b) because the breakthroughs of today are framed as being incremental compared to the big eureka moments of the 19th and 20th centuries which saw us leap from Newtonian mechanics to GR and QM. But between Newton and Einstein et al, there were centuries of incremental refinements/improvements on Newtonian mechanics and early modern astronomy, so why is there such impatience because we haven't found dark matter in barely a hundred years?
By definition, dark matter is going to be hard to detect because the only means of detecting it is merely enough to suppose that it exists, i.e. it interacts gravitationally but not electromagnetically, so we can only detect its gravitational influence on celestial bodies. Of course, it's the odd behaviour of celestial bodies that led us to suspect that dark matter was a thing in the first place, so this isn't very helpful.
I should think that, in order to prove dark matter exists, we shall have to imagine an edge case of what an extreme concentration of dark matter would do to nearby celestial matter and how that might be distinguished from conventional phenomena. Easier said than done, the universe is full of bizarre phenomena, much of which can be explained by GR and QM, and any remainders probably defy any remotely intuitive reasoning.
Alternatively, we shall have to imagine what phenomena might occur in situations where dark matter is absent, and where something can be modelled mathematically as being conclusively due to a lack of dark matter i.e. if gravity were to be different to Newtonian/GR, the phenomenon would never be seen, we can then say with confidence that dark matter is real.
To confirm it beyond any useful doubt, I suppose we would need to create conditions under which dark matter would form and observe the phenomena that occur, or build some kind of instrument that can detect gravitationally as accurately as we can detect electromagnetically. Again, easier said than done, EM force has a fundamental particle that we know very well, while gravity ... well the jury's still out on that. The graviton even if it were a thing would not be a particle in the same way, you can't have a quanta of gravity, when gravity is more of an emergent property of the geometry of spacetime? You can do the math as though it has a force carrier, but this isn't something that you expect to be able to manipulate as a particle in application.
Anyway, I'm away on a pretty hefty tangent now. The point is that it's more constructive to suppose that there is dark matter, since alternative theories (a) also include dark matter, to a lesser extent and (b) do not account for the observed behaviours without in some ways failing to predict behaviours we know and understand with known physics.
> in that adding more mass accounts for the observed behaviours without changing the known laws of physics
I disagree with statement in that I feel this is an incorrect interpretation of what transpired with physics.
Classical physics, modified and tweaked over the centuries, worked well and it’s still valid for the domains where it was already conceived and tested for.
The cracks in the model
formed when we pushed experimental boundaries.
Very high speed and extremely tiny were both new, but most (all?) of the vetted modern models will simplify down to
classical physics when in every day conditions.
The new boundary condition is galactic scale mass and distance but with mostly (?) non-relativistic speeds and probably subtle GR gravity conditions.
MOND? Darkmatter? It’s good science explore all avenues, not shutdown a discussion until conclusive evidence and lack of rebuttal shows otherwise.
Otherwise it’s not science. These days, I’ve started to suspect that it’s not scientists that have such a black and white view and certainty.
> It’s good science explore all avenues, not shutdown a discussion until conclusive evidence and lack of rebuttal shows otherwise.
I couldn't agree more. I don't think anyone should claim to be certain about any of our understanding of the universe. I just say that it isn't very useful to think that way, we make more progress if we have the courage to trust in a theory and dare to be proven wrong, than to go back to the drawing board when we get stuck.
For uncertain things, as long as the courage extends to all feasible (meaning, not outright disproven like flat-earth…) models then we’re in agreement.
What bothers me generally, is how one speculative theory
dwarfs others when the scientists themselves will admit that there’s far
more wiggle-room.
This has implications in funding and brainpower, hindering progress in the long run.
Yes, in case someone asks: The contrarian side where alt-theories include the outright disproven is also worrisome; but in HN at least everyone seems pretty bright and attentive to good science; far smarter than yours truly, certainly.
The flaw in this reasoning is ironically a philosophical (epistemological) one: by what authority is it said we "know" the laws of physics? We "believe" theories, even go so far as to sometimes call them "laws", but as we've seen with Newtonian interpretations (the "law" of gravity) they can obviously be superceded by more elegant, positive (not merely deductive) theories, i.e., general relativity. Who is to say our current understanding is the correct or best one? Granted, it's a good place to start for the experimentalists, but for some reason theoreticians have also drank the Kool-aid rather than honestly examining the other proposed theories.
> The known laws of physics have been formed on math that checks out and is consistent with all our other observations
You will of course note that "all the other observations" conveniently reside in the limit of high-mass-density regions of spacetime, where other theories also expect the current best theories of physics to hold. Where the confusion still lies is in the low-mass-density regions. At least other theories posit some explanation besides "there's still mass it just exists in other dimensions". Sounds like sci-fi crackpottery when put so plainly, but I'm sorry to say this characterization is accurate enough for our needs here.
> where does the scepticism end?
Strange application of slippery slope fallacy. It obviously ends where the theories still hold, i.e., high-mass-density regions. This is IMO enough of a response to most of your "philosophical" arguments.
No one's denying that particles exist. I'm only arguing for a theory that actually posits something besides "oops there's a gap". You've articulated a reason why dark matter is offered but it is nothing more than a deduction about where matter would be should it exist. I swear I'm going to have to spin up some cycles on the cluster to fit dark matter models on a geocentric universe to get you people to understand the non-reality of any dark matter paper.
Gosh I love being mansplained on this site by people who obviously have no personal experience with this stuff. Really gets me going.
Edit to reply to your edit:
> when gravity is more of an emergent property of the geometry of spacetime?
Emergent gravity and dark matter are incompatible theories in their usual forms, though there's probably ways to mash them together into a chimera. I suggest reading more into emergent gravity -- entropic gravity is interesting but still in its early stages. I'm not advocating for any particular theory, just humility from those who repeatedly insist that dark matter is already correct and we just need to find the matter.
> since alternative theories (a) also include dark matter, to a lesser extent
> Gosh I love being mansplained on this site by people who obviously have no personal experience with this stuff. Really gets me going.
I say this in the hope that it's constructive. You should try not to sink to this level of rudeness and assumption of other people's motives/situation/perspectives. Not only is it a rude assumption about something that (to me) looks to be a good faith attempt at conversation that also clearly took some time to compose, but it's an emotional response that shows that you take it personally and emotionally when you're challenged. I'm not implying that GP is an idiot (I'm too ignorant on this subject to know), but I've been challenged in subjects where I'm well versed by idiots many times and I tend to react the same way that you did. It can be enraging (especially when surrounded by down votes and social/group reinforcement from other idiots), but you immediately lose any power of persusasion with other people when you stoop to that level rather than keeping on the high road and keeping it factual/scientific. IMHO you're rarely if ever going to convince the person you replied to, but the third party observers are often much more persuadable. They're the people I mainly try to write comments/replies for.
I'm not responding to the challenge to my points. I'm responding primarily to the infantilizing tone explaining how science works, and especially triggering is how inaccurate it is yet delivered with such confidence. It often feels like commenters want to cosplay intelligence and see how far they can get -- in other words, there's a lot of bullshitters on this website.
If others cannot judge an argument on its merits, that is not really something I can control. I understand your point about rhetoric re: persuasion I'm just resistant to playing civility games in what should be a facts-based discussion.
I acknowledge I am impatient with those who refuse to offer good faith responses. In my opinion such good faith would mean engaging with the facts of the matter not running through a phil.sci. 101 lecture, however sincerely.
Thanks for your engagement. Your point about third parties is a good one, one I keep forgetting and re-learning.
It was not my intention to trigger anyone. I only wanted to say why dark matter is given the time of day. If I came across as condescending or as a know-it-all, I apologise, it was not what I wanted at all.
I also must apologise for my use of the term "emergent property" regarding gravity — judging by your response, I seem to have alluded (unintentionally) to a whole other theory of gravity; I only wanted to say that gravity itself is the curvature of the geometry of spacetime rather than a force in the conventional way it is described.
Also, regarding alternatives still requiring dark matter, it is my understanding that MOND and its derivatives explain galaxy rotation curves but not other phenomena that dark matter is purported to resolve (galaxy cluster formation/structure, gravitational lensing, CMB). If I am wrong about this, I would welcome correction. On the other hand, if your comment simply meant that there are alternatives to DM and MOND that require no DM, fair enough, I should have been clearer and said that some of the foremost competitor theories still require DM.
But I stress again, I am not fighting DM's corner or saying that alternatives are wrong. My stance on it is irrelevant, and I have no more belief in it than any other explanation, belief is irrelevant and doesn't enter into the matter. I was just saying that I understand why a theory that inflates mass arbitrarily, and understandably ruffles some feathers as a result, is given any credence at all.
Personally, I understand your frustration with DM, it does not seem like very good science to let unexpected or inexplicable observations make us simply add parameters without making further predictions to test if that's the right thing to do. Does seem like we're manipulating facts to fit the theory where we should be altering the theory to fit the facts.
Since DM is a substance that, for all intents and purposes, defies detection by any means at our disposal, it makes no further predictions, it just lets us push the square block into the round hole — what we should be doing is finding the square hole.
> Since DM is a substance that, for all intents and purposes, defies detection by any means at our disposal, it makes no further predictions
This is completely untrue. All serious dark matter candidates are observable. For example:
- MACHOs should show up in gravitational lensing surveys. We did the surveys, they didn't, MACHOs were rejected. Exactly the way it's supposed to work.
- Axions convert to photons in sufficiently intense magnetic fields. ADMX has ruled out part of the parameter space for axions and is undergoing upgrades to test the rest of it.
- Other WIMPs still interact via the weak force, and therefore with nucleons. There are many experiments looking for WIMP scattering. A few of them have gotten signals but not enough to be convincing.
Dark matter candidates are not just "mass with no further properties" sitting out there to make the model fit. They're proposed extensions to the standard model (which is nothing but proposed extensions to quantum electrodynamics which ended up working out), and therefore very tightly constrained by the standards of any other scientific field.
Unfortunately those are all candidates which are conjured ex post facto to explain the "mass with no known properties" that is inferred. As you say, none of them are convincing. It's also just bad science to reach for factors that are just-so explanations of the observed phenomena.
They are not. MACHOs definitely exist, it just turns out there aren't nearly enough of them. Axions were proposed as a solution to the strong CP problem years before anyone went looking for dark matter candidates. Sterile (i.e. right-handed) neutrinos are motivated by the need to explain why left-handed neutrinos, contrary to the predictions of the standard model, have mass. Supersymmetry was originally an attempt at strong-electroweak unification.
At no point did I say the laws of physics are beyond question or doubt, and neither did I say dark matter is correct.
I just said it makes more sense to give DM priority because what is the point of having a model if you don't start from it.
Also why are you being so hostile towards me exactly? I didn't express any love for dark matter or the standard model, and I am not a fan of perpetuating a status quo or any form of academic dogma.
All I said, quite unsuccessfully it would seem, is why people think its likely for dark matter to be there — because if you add in "invisible" mass with existing laws of physics, you get something that looks like what we see through our telescopes. I think many would prefer to suppose that there is non-EM-interacting mass (a lot of it apparently), than there being as yet unknown behaviours of gravity/spacetime geometry, which we like to think we understand pretty well.
Though I agree that we don't understand the universe as well as we like to think; and that the universe is not intuitive at all most of the time; and a preference based on how intuitively likely something seems is irrelevant to what the truth will turn out to be.
Edit: just FYI, I am not downvoting your responses by the way. I am not bothered if you dislike me or disagree with things I have said, though these two things should be distinct from each other.
I'm nobody and I didn't seek to "mansplain" anything whatever this term is supposed to mean. I was just talking, always happy to debate, something I thought people came here to do. I won't make the mistake again.
>"there's still mass it just exists in other dimensions"
What? Dark matter is there. Leading models consider it to be particles that don't interact with e/m field and interact weakly with gravity so is undetected in low-density regions. That doesn't make it other-dimensional.
>Sounds like sci-fi crackpottery
Like the prediction of particles in standard model? Is Higgs boson that went undected for 50 years sci-fi crackpottery?
There're issues with dark matter but it also (sadly some may say) happens to be the best explanation of the observed phenomena since all alternative models fall (plus although simpler at first sight quickly get more complex) in more ways than dark matter.
>I suggest reading more into emergent gravity
Emergent (either entropic or induced) gravity has nothing to do with the comment. It's obvious what GP meant. The correct should've been intrinsic property but this is nitpicking.
Being able to fit models is very far from being able to say "it's there", especially the kinds of models that are being fit. See my responses to sibling comments. "Leading theories", especially given the human impulse toward consensus, got the charge of the electron wrong for a long time before the culture readjusted and decided to look fresh at the problem with new experiments.
> happens to be the best explanation
The people who repeat this in popular science are just repeating what they hear from academics who, surprise!, have invested their entire career and reputation in the scientific community on that being true. Science demands more skepticism and interest in the truth than parroting status quo. It's also technically true only if you assume that explanations built on fitting extremely flexible nonparametric models are theories, but that doesn't seem like a mindset that's very interested in those theories representing truth per se.
> Like the prediction of particles in standard model? Is Higgs boson that went undected for 50 years sci-fi crackpottery?
It would be better to rearrange this to "interact gravitationally, and maybe non-gravitationally at the scale of the weak nuclear force".
In the standard cosmology \Lambda-CDM, cold dark matter ("CDM") is allowed to interact at the scale of the weak nuclear force (wnf), which may allow participation in nuclear interactions. This motivates the search for direct detection in various track and scintillator experiments, where a WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle) could take recoil energy from an atomic nucleus, the latter leaving behind a trail of charged particles and/or emitted photons. There are of course other hypothesized interactions between WIMPs and normal matter which do not literally engage the wnf, but instead have some new interaction at no more than the same energy scale ("weak scale"). And for completeness, there are CDM models which have stronger but rarer individual interactions which average out to the weak scale (or effective collisionlessness) across volumes comparable to the size of galaxies or galaxy clusters.
(In the standard cosmology what matters is that the equation of state for dark matter is 0 or close to it so that expansion dilutes it away like cold baryons; in structure formation and galactic dynamics it's more important that most dark matter is in a halo outside the luminous structure. Both are incompatible with decays or collisions which emit relativstic particles (w > ~ 1/6 leads to early evaporation of overdensities; galactic dynamics is less tolerant of (non-radiative) clumping and other mechanisms which concentrate/gravitationally-collapse halos).
> interact ... with gravity
In a system of coordinates that absorbs linear and angular momentum, all matter -- dark or otherwise -- interacts gravitationally in proportion to its mass (or energy-density).
In General Relativity, this is the universality of free fall, which descends from Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation.
Unless we modify or abandon General Relativity, a dark matter particle and an alpha particle occupying the same starting point and having the same initial velocity will follow the same trajectory together forever barring some interaction (examples: intrinsic: one of the particles decays emitting radiation, or there is some weak scale interaction between them that imparts a recoil on one or both of the initial alpha or DM; extrinsic: scattering of a photon off the alpha, or the alpha captures electron(s) imparting a recoil -- a force that shoves the alpha onto a different trajectory, a non-gravitational acceleration). This is the weak equivalence principle (WEP), <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle#The_weak...> from a somewhat Fermi-Walker perspective; the "weak" in WEP is unrelated to the weak nuclear force.
Finally, dark matter and baryonic matter (and all other matter and radiation) interact the same way with the curvature of spacetime. If dark matter and baryons interact non-gravitationally at all, the (averaged) interaction is at no more than the weak scale. \Lambda-CDM does not require any non-gravitational interaction between CDM and baryons.
It exists for casual, potentially older users, outside of dev/IT profession, to do grocery shopping and simple games on a couch while they watch TV after work.
I've never bought an iPad or found use for the one I was once given as a present, I have seen older people transition from using cheap crappy laptops to iPads with only positive feedback, probably because it's easier for them to use.
It's largely the same UI as their smartphone which they'll be familiar with by now, it's easier to pick up and put down, smaller form factor but not so small that they'd be pinch-zooming frequently as they would on a phone, etc.
Anecdotal but it makes sense. Also marginally easier for a layperson to hold an iPad up and show a partner what they're buying, than a laptop.
Personally, I'm in the industry, and I've been playing with computers for 27 years. I have a phone for reading stuff like this on the go, and a laptop for working on things home or at the office. I have no professional or recreational use for a tablet. I have a laptop and I'm very glad it doesn't have a touchscreen. But I can understand why non-laptop products exist.
Couple of other developers I know have iPads, but they have them in the same way they have an electric toothbrush — they didn't need it, but they bought it anyway. Mostly see them use it for browsing the web or shopping after work. I suppose if your stuff's at the office and you just want to cruise the web, an iPad is lighter than a personal laptop, but I just use my phone /shrug emoji.
Some illustrators I know have iPads but I'm pretty sure they'd survive without them. For actual work they have a proper setup (wacom, magic trackpad), and if you need to sketch something on the fly, pen and paper is still a functional and low-cost solution, as is a phone since you have one already for a dozen other reasons.
Designers don't need an iPad at all, mouse is sufficient.
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