51–59 of 59 posts
Is this contest even worth entering as an autodidact? Looking at past contest winners, the majority seem to hold a PhD.
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> The reduction from QM to newtonian mechanics is very easy This is just not true. For example when enanglement is involved all of this goes out the window. Indeed, the next few decades of quantum computing is going to be completely non-reducible to newtownian mechanics. > QM is not acausal. I disagree entirely. QM is exactly acausal. Also known as the measurement problem.
> For example when enanglement is involved all of this goes out the window. Fair enough, this is sort of a counter example to the "increase the action" trick, but it does work for any local effects. > Also known as the measurement problem. There is no need to violate causality to solve the measurement problem. Even superluminal solutions don't allow for the superluminal transmission of information, so causality is pr…
I'm not suggesting to violate causality, I'm saying there just is no cause.
> to solve the measurement problem
I don't think there is any solution. The physical laws of the universe are incomplete, they do not determine what "happens." There are constraints in the form of probabilities, so it's not like anything can happen at any time. But what actually happens, it's spontaneous, un-caused.
> huge families of solutions
This is a vast area of research that has spanned decades and yielded very little in the way of solutions. Hence my use of the term "boneheaded" above.
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what is the problem?
It's The Hard Problem. Suppose we eventually know everything about the body and mind, that some day science can simulate and predict the motion of every atom in your body. Thus, all your behavior is deterministic. That still doesn't explain why there's an "ego" there to experience it all.
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> For example when enanglement is involved all of this goes out the window. Fair enough, this is sort of a counter example to the "increase the action" trick, but it does work for any local effects. > Also known as the measurement problem. There is no need to violate causality to solve the measurement problem. Even superluminal solutions don't allow for the superluminal transmission of information, so causality is pr…
> violate causality I'm not suggesting to violate causality, I'm saying there just is no cause. > to solve the measurement problem I don't think there is any solution. The physical laws of the universe are incomplete, they do not determine what "happens." There are constraints in the form of probabilities, so it's not like anything can happen at any time. But what actually happens, it's spontaneous, un-caused. > huge…
Ah, your problem is that you only seem to be aware of the Copenhagen interpretation. There are other interpretations available that work just as well, but don't have anything as inconvenient as nondeterminism.
> This is a vast area of research that has spanned decades and yielded very little in the way of solutions.
No, you are wrong here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einselection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_collapse_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation
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> GEB is a textbook on AI that's just trying to come at it sideways. That's because it's not a book on AI at all [0]. It talks about it a lot. And sets up a lot of fundamental ideas for it. But it's as much a book about AI as Moby Dick is a book about whaling. It's great reading if you're interested in AI (edit: If you're on HN, you'll probably love the book /edit), but if you pick it up expecting an AI textbook, or…
I'm aware. I've written most of what Hofstadter has written - I also didn't say that it was only a textbook on AI or even that it was explicitly intended that way. But I do maintain that the book is about precisely the topics that you need a deep understanding of if you want to think productively about AI. In that sense, it's a damn good textbook on AI, whether it was intended that way or not.
Top prize is ten grand (!) so I expect the essays submitted will be higher quality than your average online contest. I wonder how well I could budget my time over the next few months... this is roughly what I majored in, but it might be bad for my health to plunge back into a student's paper-writing schedule.
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> various readings over the past year Yes, what were these? I tend to agree with you about causality. The attempts to understand how the classical world arises from quantum laws seem particularly boneheaded to me. I guess people (scientists) don't want to let go of causality because who knows what chaos and mayhem will befall the world if we give up on this. And the philosophers have a term "causal closure" which see…
> how the classical world arises from quantum laws seem particularly boneheaded What classical world do you refer to? Newtonian physics? That's well understood, the general area of study is called thermal physics. Are you talking about how the brain works? The biologists understand the meso-scale structures and the microscale structures, and the wiring. What they lack is a certified, detailed diagram, which is admitt…
In short: Mindless mathematical laws encode all kinds of patterns. Our brains also encode patterns in them. These patterns mirror the outside world. Once your brain models "the state of the world" it can also model the configuration space of the world: the ways things could be. An aim or intention is an ordering in that configuration space. "I could have many things for breakfast; what I'd prefer is X" is an ordering…
The theme seems weirdly phrased. It's like asking "How can a tree give rise to the color green?" Their attempt to clarify didn't really clarify. They're looking for a causal relationship between physical law and thought process (because "aims and intention" are thoughts ). Perhaps causality itself is the wrong tool to apply here. Thanks to various readings over the past year, I'm starting to believe causality as an a…
> various readings over the past year Yes, what were these? I tend to agree with you about causality. The attempts to understand how the classical world arises from quantum laws seem particularly boneheaded to me. I guess people (scientists) don't want to let go of causality because who knows what chaos and mayhem will befall the world if we give up on this. And the philosophers have a term "causal closure" which see…
Note that neither of these authors argue that the scientific method is wrong (as some new-agey types do), but rather that it is incomplete, and a poor tool for understanding the real world in many situations.