Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fake Physics

math.columbia.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 94 posts

Re: Fake Physics

#81

Post by kmonad »

dekhn wrote: post #78
kmonad wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you genuinely believe this is an insightful response? Without knowing your background, this makes it seem rather likely you are arguing from the 'larger population' point of view. Given the forum, let's assume you're a little more familiar with tech: Perfect encryption? NLP that understands meaning? Do you see now how it's a fallacy to take cutting edge scientific breakthroughs and demand instantaneous application…

His comment is spot on. We cannot manipulate life almost at will. We have some amazing tools, but the actual outcomes of manipulation are mostly just selecting for rare, random positive outcomes, than actual intent and engineering leading to rational results. (background: PhD in Biophysics, I've cloned genes and run huge simulations of protein folding, as well as worked in genomics and pharmaceutical chemistry).

I think you misunderstand, what you are saying is my point. I argue that science, unlike the parent comment's claim, has not stagnated but made amazing progress. Yet, that when seeking to identify scientific progress by looking at new applications one might not arrive at a valid conclusion.

Re: Fake Physics

#82

Post by kmonad »

marktangotango wrote: post #72
kmonad wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you genuinely believe this is an insightful response? Without knowing your background, this makes it seem rather likely you are arguing from the 'larger population' point of view. Given the forum, let's assume you're a little more familiar with tech: Perfect encryption? NLP that understands meaning? Do you see now how it's a fallacy to take cutting edge scientific breakthroughs and demand instantaneous application…

The statement I quoted was pure bombast and hyperbole. I trivially disproved it by example. You are clearly ignorant about the challenges involved applying molecular biology to solve real problems ie the areas I cited to start. The onus is on you to educate yourself.

May I just point out that 'science is stagnant' is not only hyperbole, but wrong, as disproved by my examples highlighting amazing achievements in biology and mathematics. Unless you would like to propse neither are amazing feats.

Re: Fake Physics

#83

Post by dekhn »

kmonad wrote: post #81
dekhn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His comment is spot on. We cannot manipulate life almost at will. We have some amazing tools, but the actual outcomes of manipulation are mostly just selecting for rare, random positive outcomes, than actual intent and engineering leading to rational results. (background: PhD in Biophysics, I've cloned genes and run huge simulations of protein folding, as well as worked in genomics and pharmaceutical chemistry).

I think you misunderstand, what you are saying is my point. I argue that science, unlike the parent comment's claim, has not stagnated but made amazing progress. Yet, that when seeking to identify scientific progress by looking at new applications one might not arrive at a valid conclusion.

OK. I would say "discovery is stochastic", such that we do make amazing progress in a theoretical sense, although that progress doesn't seem to lead to tangible improvements.

Re: Fake Physics

#84

Post by kmonad »

dekhn wrote: post #83
kmonad wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand, what you are saying is my point. I argue that science, unlike the parent comment's claim, has not stagnated but made amazing progress. Yet, that when seeking to identify scientific progress by looking at new applications one might not arrive at a valid conclusion.

OK. I would say "discovery is stochastic", such that we do make amazing progress in a theoretical sense, although that progress doesn't seem to lead to tangible improvements.

Certainly our understanding of the world is improved, no? When you mean 'tangible' in the sense of 'solving a real world problem', i.e. an immediate application, then I feel this is getting a little circular. I simply reject the claim that one of the parent comments were making whereby science in general is not progressing. (edit: question mark)

Re: Fake Physics

#85

Post by sgt101 »

wolfgke wrote: post #39
YZF wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about either of these. The problem with fusion is commercial viability. Building something for billions of dollars that can barely put out more energy than you put in isn't commercially viable. At any rate, fusion seems more like a very tough engineering problem, the physics has been there for a long while. With quantum computing there are also no real signs that a quantum computer will beat a "classical…

> With quantum computing there are also no real signs that a quantum computer will beat a "classical" computer at anything any time soon. It always was and still is very difficult to get quantum systems to scale and you need a large enough system to make a difference and it may be impossible to do so. Again a lot of this is more of an engineering problem though admittedly the line between physics and engineering can…

I think that the largest simulation of a quantum computer on a super computer is about 40qbits. Therefore quantum supremacy (weak...) is 41 stable qbits. There are numbers of groups out there that are building (working on projects with the funding to complete) machines with 100's of stable qbits now, so my argument is that quantum supremacy of the weak sort is a matter of engineering. I think that quantum computers that factor primes with 100's of digits (like 2048 bit ones) requires 1000's of qbits, say a couple of orders of magnitudes beyond the machines that are currently in train to be built.

The Hooft thing is that there are limits on computation due to the process of the universe and that if a classical computer that was at the plank scale, runs at plankian speed (help help I am using terms I can't understand!!!) and covered the whole of the universe couldn't do it from the beginning of time to heat death... then nor can an arbitrary QC. Shores algorithm does factors in (log n)^3 maybe we'll find that there are physical limits on the scale of QC which hold it below hundreds of millions of qbits where a plankian computer could be synthesised, and/or it may be that such a computer can't run at high clock speeds, and because of this BQP algorithms can't be run on problems that are not allowed in the sense that they somehow solve the universe.

I don't think anyone has any reason to believe this is true in an engineering sense but there is every reason to believe that large QC will be very, very difficult in an engineering sense and I think that the people building one do expect to run into problems of this sort eventually, but at the moment they are delighted to find that they are able to do things at the lower end that will create devices that are going to be transformational for reasoning about some components of the physical universe - for example simulation of the interactions of very large molecules - maybe mapping seconds of a virus interacting with a cell membrane using months of QC ?

Re: Fake Physics

#86

Post by [deleted] »

wolfgke wrote: post #39
YZF wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about either of these. The problem with fusion is commercial viability. Building something for billions of dollars that can barely put out more energy than you put in isn't commercially viable. At any rate, fusion seems more like a very tough engineering problem, the physics has been there for a long while. With quantum computing there are also no real signs that a quantum computer will beat a "classical…

> With quantum computing there are also no real signs that a quantum computer will beat a "classical" computer at anything any time soon. It always was and still is very difficult to get quantum systems to scale and you need a large enough system to make a difference and it may be impossible to do so. Again a lot of this is more of an engineering problem though admittedly the line between physics and engineering can…

[deleted]

Re: Fake Physics

#87

Post by sgt101 »

YZF wrote: post #29
sgt101 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the fusion guys think that they have made fusion work and are going to deliver it commercially in ~15 years (in ~5 years this claim will be either obvious or dead). I think that the quantum computer guys think that they are about to deliver as well.

I'm not sure about either of these. The problem with fusion is commercial viability. Building something for billions of dollars that can barely put out more energy than you put in isn't commercially viable. At any rate, fusion seems more like a very tough engineering problem, the physics has been there for a long while. With quantum computing there are also no real signs that a quantum computer will beat a "classical…

One of the things that the fusion community is trying to do is scale down the size of machine that is required, basically the view is that the volume of facility determines the cost (interestingly the stats presented seem to support this) and by building compact devices the price of the machine will decline accordingly. This will enable commercial implementations - if it works!

Re: Fake Physics

#88

Post by YZF »

Strilanc wrote: post #38
YZF wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about either of these. The problem with fusion is commercial viability. Building something for billions of dollars that can barely put out more energy than you put in isn't commercially viable. At any rate, fusion seems more like a very tough engineering problem, the physics has been there for a long while. With quantum computing there are also no real signs that a quantum computer will beat a "classical…

> there are also no real signs that a quantum computer will beat a "classical" computer at anything any time soon John Martinis' group is planning to do that within the next two years [1][2]. Ten years might be realistic for solving useful problems faster and cheaper, but the esoteric speedups are right around the corner. 1: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.00263 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgMWommXxU8

Just watched the talk. Definitely an interesting direction.

One question I'd have is whether quantum simulation is indeed the fastest way to solve the quantum speckle problem on a classical computer. The other related thing to think about is whether the output of a quantum speckle computer can only be explained by the large state space and quantum mechanics or whether there are alternative explanations.

So definitely an interesting direction but even if they're successful we're still not quite there. When we have a quantum computer doing useful work with exponential speedup over classical computers that would be something and even then we only have a very limited set of algorithms at the moment.

Re: Fake Physics

#89

Post by le-mark »

kmonad wrote: post #81
dekhn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His comment is spot on. We cannot manipulate life almost at will. We have some amazing tools, but the actual outcomes of manipulation are mostly just selecting for rare, random positive outcomes, than actual intent and engineering leading to rational results. (background: PhD in Biophysics, I've cloned genes and run huge simulations of protein folding, as well as worked in genomics and pharmaceutical chemistry).

I think you misunderstand, what you are saying is my point. I argue that science, unlike the parent comment's claim, has not stagnated but made amazing progress. Yet, that when seeking to identify scientific progress by looking at new applications one might not arrive at a valid conclusion.

Why do others misunderstand? Maybe you say one thing and mean something else? It is clear you're arguing for the sake of arguing, and this community is worse off for it.

Re: Fake Physics

#90

Post by untoreh »

Animats wrote: post #25
parasubcutaneor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, I had considered the idea that after the invention of the atomic bomb, the cabal of scientists surrounding its discovery were asked to obfuscate further advancements, and seclude practical findings behind classified restrictions. Many of the scienctists of that post war era were hounded mercilessly for decades ever after, throughout the cold war. If one were to try and obfuscate a scientific field, and…

At some point, I had considered the idea that after the invention of the atomic bomb, the cabal of scientists surrounding its discovery were asked to obfuscate further advancements, and seclude practical findings behind classified restrictions. Conspiracy theory: in the early days after the H-bomb, there was research into finding some way to make an H-bomb without needing an atomic bomb just to get the energy to star…

Like majorana
Post reply on HN