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How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

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Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#71

Post by Retra »

dchapp wrote: post #4
sawwit wrote: post #2

Off topic: This seems to be an odd emphasis on the word "good". Can a native English speaker confirm?

I agree that use of "good" is questionable here. One would think that without the skills mentioned, one wouldn't be a theoretical physicist at all . (Is every person who lacks these skills a "bad theoretical physicist"? Only in a vacuous sense.) That said, I think we should interpret "how to become a good theoretical physicist" as "how to gain the competencies that are expected of s theoretical physicist."

That's is what he means by good: one with enough competence in the field to do actually useful work. If you manage to do useful work in physics, that work could translate into a Nobel Prize just as easily as any other useful work.

A bad theoretical physicist is one who only understands enough to sound smart to their friends. AKA, a crank.

Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#72

Post by mindcrime »

ioeu wrote: post #68
mindcrime wrote: post #11

I love this kind of site. Not that you can't scour up the content yourself using Google, but here's the thing... when you're trying to "teach yourself" something complex, one of the challenges you run into (in my experience) is understanding the order of the dependencies for prerequisites and sub-topics. And nothing is more frustrating than trying to read a book or a paper and feeling totally lost because you're miss…

I totally agree! If anybody knows of something similar for artificial general intelligence I'm all ears, currently in the process of reading up on it.

Don't know of one off hand. I know a few curated lists related to specific AI/ML topics have shown up here on HN (mostly NN and DL stuff,IIRC), but I don't remember one that covers AGI. There's definitely a TON of great AI content on the 'net, but yeah, a nice curated guide to help work through the important stuff, in order, would be very helpful.

Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#73

Post by titanomachy »

ioeu wrote: post #68
mindcrime wrote: post #11

I love this kind of site. Not that you can't scour up the content yourself using Google, but here's the thing... when you're trying to "teach yourself" something complex, one of the challenges you run into (in my experience) is understanding the order of the dependencies for prerequisites and sub-topics. And nothing is more frustrating than trying to read a book or a paper and feeling totally lost because you're miss…

I totally agree! If anybody knows of something similar for artificial general intelligence I'm all ears, currently in the process of reading up on it.

To borrow Prof. 't Hooft's imagery, I imagine that GAI would be right at the top of a skyscraper whose lower levels consist of mathematics, cognitive science, and computer science at increasing levels of sophistication.

Beginning your study of cognitive/computer science with GAI could be frustrating and fruitless, just as would be beginning your study of physics with superstring theory.

There are probably well-written and interesting GAI books/articles for laypeople, though, analogous to Brian Greene's excellent books on string theory.

Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#74

Post by titanomachy »

emmelaich wrote: post #51

Greek letters are used a lot. Learn their names, otherwise you make a fool of yourself when giving an oral presentation One thing that surprised the heck out of me is that we don't pronounce Greek letters like the Greeks do. Example: tau sounds something like taf in Greek. (that's all I got :-)

I speak reasonably fluent Greek (family language), and took a course in Classical Greek when I was in school. My professor explained that the pronunciations used in mathematics (tau, beta, mu...) differ from the Modern Greek versions (taf, veeta, mee...) because the former are the (conjectured) pronunciations used in the classical language. A large source of evidence for the pronunciation of Classical Greek is the transliteration of Greek words in to other languages during that period, especially into Latin. The whole language is pronounced very differently, not just the alphabet.

As a side note, that class was absurdly easy because I already knew almost all the vocabulary. The classical grammar is quite different though, and more complicated.

Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#76

Post by ioeu »

titanomachy wrote: post #73
ioeu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree! If anybody knows of something similar for artificial general intelligence I'm all ears, currently in the process of reading up on it.

To borrow Prof. 't Hooft's imagery, I imagine that GAI would be right at the top of a skyscraper whose lower levels consist of mathematics, cognitive science, and computer science at increasing levels of sophistication. Beginning your study of cognitive/computer science with GAI could be frustrating and fruitless, just as would be beginning your study of physics with superstring theory. There are probably well-writte…

Your response is totally understandable given my (very clumsy) comment. Let me make myself more clear; I'm in the process of reading up on what material one should study to set oneself up to ultimately be able to consider AGI research as a career choice.

You say "mathematics, cognitive science, and computer science at increasing levels of sophistication.". That's probably true, I'd recon a fair bit of biology, chemistry and physics is most likely also needed.

My question, though, is what specific branches of said subjects?

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