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Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

johnsalvatier.org

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Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#5

Post by ssivark »

This is basically the reason why our current approaches to AI are so woefully inadequate, that they don’t even deserve the name “AI”. The manifestation of this in AI, as first discussed in the 80s, is called the “frame problem”.

This is basically the problem with “big” data i.e. more comprehensive data (more columns) rather than more examples (more rows) — it’s difficult to winnow out the relevant features from the irrelevant.

The current belief is that good priors are super important to have any hope of doing that reasonably well — but how to get those good priors is anybody’s guess.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#6

Post by bertr4nd »

I notice this effect all the time when cooking, and the maddening part is how hard it can be to even figure out the right details.

Like, the best sausages I ever cooked were at a barbecue in park, on a random public grill with no particular attention to the heat (I think the sausages caught fire briefly), and yet they were amazing. Juicy and delicious, with just the right amount of char on the outside. Over my home grill, with careful regulation of the grill temperature and a pro quality instant read thermometer, I’ve never quite managed to do better than “pretty good.”

(I highly suspect one of the details is “undercook your sausages” which is easier to do when you’re blissfully ignorant of the actual temperature.)

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#8

Post by combatentropy »

This is why I think people should still learn their job through hands-on apprenticeship, as opposed to a lot of book-learning in the classroom. In fact I think people do still learn their jobs that way. It's just delayed by several years of book-learning that has little return on investment. When you finally land your job, your first few months are when you really start learning enough to become useful.

Disclaimer: I am biased. I am biased toward book learning! In school I made A's and loved book learning.

Clarification: I think book learning is useful. It's just that the order is wrong. Nothing I read in a book sticks until I have tried my hand at it for a few weeks. But an experienced programmer (or plumber for that matter) would probably get even better after reading a few good books.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#9

Post by earenndil »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #7

I think this is an argument against the "we live in a simulator" idea - the amount of detail is just too much.

FWIW I think that simulation theory is fairly obviously bunk, but that's not really an argument. We have no frame of reference for the nature of the simulator, including its constraints and the level of detail it can manage.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#10

Post by feanaro »

combatentropy wrote: post #8

This is why I think people should still learn their job through hands-on apprenticeship, as opposed to a lot of book-learning in the classroom. In fact I think people do still learn their jobs that way. It's just delayed by several years of book-learning that has little return on investment. When you finally land your job, your first few months are when you really start learning enough to become useful. Disclaimer: I…

> Nothing I read in a book sticks until I have tried my hand at it for a few weeks.

I don't think this is universal, though. Book reading is very natural for me and sticks immediately. In fact, I often find that things I've read today and not understood become magically clear a few days later.

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